Talking to myself while walking
down a lonely street
I spied the strangest character
whom I would ever meet.
‘Twas a moonstruck beggar
with a sparkle in his eye.
I tossed some money in his cup
as I was passing by.
Though he posed inanimate
Till I had come along,
he sprang to life, and pranced around,
and sang this cosmic song…
“Once upon a here and now
and evermore I find
that everything that seems so real
is really in my mind.
Everyone I’ve ever met,
and every sight I’ve seen
were just a maze of mirrors
in a dream within a dream.
I’m the muse, the poet,
and the lines of poetry
the painting of the painter,
and the painter painting me.
Pieces of one puzzle-
all my personalities.
Love’s the joyous feeling
when we sense our unity.
Time’s a treasured currency,
impossible to spend.
‘Never’ is a fantasy
that happens now and then.
Though it seems like chance or fate
or luck is guiding us,
every probability
is simultaneous.
When the curtain closes
and this character is done,
I’ll slip into another role
to find ‘what dreams may come.’
Nothing lasts forever
but the One-Who-Never-Ends.
Me, myself, and nothingness
are all that’s ever been.”
As I walked away, he wished me
“happily ever after.”
But when I turned around, he burst
into a crazy laughter.
Thinking back on all of his
confounding revelations,
could it be that I am merely
his hallucination?
Haunted by this feeling,
though it’s infinitely odd,
I wonder if the lunatic
I met that day…was God.
