Black and White

Now this chunky residue of mental concrete
Comes abruptly splashing down in a sea of nuance
Especially designed for me as a lesson in black and white.

It took time for me to get here, sober meditation and all,
But only a fraction of a second for it to all come undone.
I’m left asking myself just what choices I have left.

The mind is a prison, damp and grey, without any light,
Or recognition of the sun, but the wheels keep turning in
This stifling muck until it stalls, restless and unthinking.

And I ready myself a bound notebook, pen at the ready,
To scratch the clean paper with theories of my emotional state,
Writing the words, trying to connect what I cannot describe.

If this is what existence means then what is it that it doesn’t mean?
What isn’t it? The dogs keep barking without care, the birds,
Unaware of such a dilemma, get ready to fly.

I write my thoughts, draw my pictograms and get ready to say
The same old things that I do every day, accepting the distance
That suddenly seems pertinent and irrelevant at the same time.

Pertinent and irrelevant and black and white.