130. Kindness

In your eyes,
I see only coldness;
in your smile
I feel only hardness

In my mind, I
see only joy, I
feel only warmth

Only after have I been
informed
plainly,
nonchalantly

that you had not cared,
I realize how foolish I was,
how naïve I had been again,
fooled to believe in
a world of
false illusions,
forced again to return to
a bleak and
unchanging reality.

Could I have believed
a mere mortal
could transport me out of
this misery, this
eternal, natural world?

All we have are empty trees,
empty skies,
empty oxygen
filled with our misguided
dreams, lofty
expectations –

Stripped down to molecules,
what are we searching for:
meaning from our
atomic structures?
How could beauty assuage
fears, solve
insecurities?

Is it really only
escapist tendencies,
wishing to pretend there is
something more, there is
meaning?

In vain, searching
the same cold irises for
truth

Beauty is not truth;
beauty forces us to
examine, to
struggle from, to accept
our condition,
our destiny:
our frailty
and our
mortality.