There’s this picture

In my head

Sometimes

When I need some kind of nudge

That if I don’t conjure it up,

I’ll never see it again

And I’ll just fold forever into fight or flight.

The picture is nothing idyllic or rose-colored. Who would want to fish for a dream of perfection?

When we all know, there’s

Never been any Eden.

What has transpired in the never-ending bullet train of time is a lot of imperfections.

It’s been messy.

Rage and greed and hate are not new.

They’ve always been a part of this human condition,

Instead of holding up the social contract, it’s the hate and the greed and the rage that start to turn the picture as if it had a soul that was threaded loose.

A moment, a civilization, a species that may simply unravel.

The picture I want to see:

It’s really just you and me,

And it’s just a normal day.

Sunshine spreads, and the world turns once more.

In those moments of nothing really,

There’s peace and comfort, something we all cling to.

We’ve made it through, and the people decided that they could no longer

crave the greed and the hate and the rage.

They looked around and, more than not, just couldn’t bend another day to the mongers of cruelty.

Why are some even this way?

Wrapping their condemnation in something less uncomfortable

What is so dead or malignant inside of them?

Well, it’s the rage and the hate and the greed. It seemed like such a fit.

But it wears them more than they don it.

It’s breathing and fluid, tentacles of tyranny.

There’s no picture for them. They’ve really got no image anymore; they’ve fallen to be the worst of us.

It’s no place but the present.

But as Orwell said,

Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.

The control sits on a carousel, faster and harsher – where will the picture land?

In the ash or the hope-locked thicket?

I won’t let it go. I cannot be – I cannot let you, the best of us, be consumed by the hate and the rage and the greed.

That picture, I will forever call for it.

Not for the memory; it’s not one.

We aren’t anywhere near anything great.

We are addicted to the spin and the other-ing and the misplaced self-importance.

Look around.

Snap some stills in your head.

Ask yourself to record what you see.

Is it there?

Do you have it?

Will you remember it?

If you do, I’ll see you on the other side.

In the picture of you and me.