Life . . . as proof of fear

Fear is isolation’s wellspring.

It can be impending

like a religious experience

in the way an epiphany

can smother the past

or a doom producing guilt

as a bludgeoning implement

can become darkly ingrained.

Survival is then a horizon line

displaying as fate,

or breaking the sound barrier

of comprehension’s complaint,

or facing a freefall of happenstance

as hard luck,

where reality’s results

confirm as a second opinion.

The ‘been there’ baggage of now

can never be left behind.

We are unintentionally

as a work-in-progress

called recovery

where endless re-stimulations occur.

Fear is the lowest octave

of self-consciousness sung.

This musical has no audience

but on a limitless stage.

It is sung through the body cavity

by drone and wail.

Most of us together

hum the chorus in loud silence.

Each of us fancies lyrics

of apparent self-authorship.

Fear is in the wind

across us as our human instruments.

As much as fear is a hand-me-down

of unspoken tradition

and unconscious incantations,

it is a language without speech

and heard without ears.

Fear is this wellspring

and we all sip more than the whine.

With fear, we are characterized,

cherished, and diminished.

With this fear, we are challenged,

dismissed, esteemed, and abandoned.

Some many forms

are all from the same essential sourcing.

All as by-products of the trails

of self-consciousness.

All of this as riddles of origin,

interpretation, and eventual repose.

We are all participants

from stillborns to centenarians.

Fear, as a consciousness viscosity

is in us as water based creatures.

We are vessels

who toasts ourselves unknowingly.

We are inadvertently living life

as proof of fear.