by LJ Frank

Of late, I travel by car and foot much of the remaining hours, limited by the coins in a pocket and paper in a wallet, the cost to find a fresh scene is an expense of my heart; hiking across a mountain, through a valley and across a plain, listening to the cadence and mixture of cheerful and questioning voices, I walk down a village street, people talk in their local dialects about the commonality of their life, surmising the origin of a peculiar tradition until a new one comes along and opens a thought;

 The eerie post-modern peel of a chapel bell notes the demise of the three prominent religions and countless other isms as the rituals of a new myth take hold, while people search for a transformational idea to describe their new persuasion and replace the centuries old words created in moments of self and other wanting;

 Power perishes in the ruble filled battles of self-indulgence; for Revelation was devised by a man with a white beard high on mushrooms I suspect, and the calculus of awareness is determined by circumstance, dissatisfaction and the morsel sized wish of forgiveness to satisfy the hunger and the desire of the palate; 

 Love surmounts loathing and hate, and continues to seep into a nurturing heart regardless of nostalgia or tradition; for a prophecy is truly profitable when no money is involved while it engages with a caring voice, notwithstanding the endless poppy and daisy covered fields;

 Being born and finding affirmation is a compelling struggle for most, the worth of the birthing canal of life’s trek is open to doubt, faced with inevitable mortality, only to be assuaged by a consecrated longing while knowing the nothingness of eternity also preceded my birth, what are the choices but to inscribe my soul with a smile amid the hurt and to breathe, to sense, to taste, to touch; an aging witness but of whose reflection?