The Monster of Choices

I’m suspended in an open cage, a tomb that bears no dead, a nexus without answers, for questions are its bread. Unfettered is its body, and endless is its reach, and you cannot escape it, this, no man can teach. Let me tell you without image, let me show you without sound, Let me drag you down to heaven, let me lift you to the ground. For it's beyond, within, without, its greatest weapon is your doubt, So listen, watch, and touch, and taste, and I’ll unwrap the monster’s face. Its horns are countless choices. Its eyes are future’s fields. Its maw is pure desire. Its claws are plans that yield. So sweet is every part of it, so beautiful, so right. Truth distilled in matter, a drink of pure starlight. But the pieces of this puzzle, alone, such works of art, together are a nightmare, oblivion’s very heart. O can’t you see? O can’t you hear? O can’t you feel? The direst fear, of knowing roads cannot be walked, that time cannot retrace, that selection is destruction, extinction of a race, of lives that one could someday live, of people one could see, of dreams that needed dreaming, of love that had to be. But now it’s gone, forever, what’s real is fantasy, you’ve slaughtered better stories, for a mere drop of the sea. And that’s the cage, the iron lock, that keeps my life in line. It’s the pull of countless choices, each one so cruelly fine, Not because of problems, or faults in any one, But because you choose a single path, and so much else is gone. 9 October 2015