Consciousness



	It is an issue of power, the distance

	between ourselves.  Within ourselves.

	It is an ocean and I drift in

	a decaying boat, without an engine;

	wind-shredded sail, steering aimlessly.

	A vast gulf ... No.  (That's too easy.)

	It is not a sea, and it is not a desert,

	nor an endless plain.

	There is no such thing as a still life.

	A void?  It is not empty, it is too full.



	The collection of decisions, including

	choices not yet made --

	they accumulate, gather bulk, take form.

	Limbs moving, trunk thickening, they become an it.

	It is alive with sleepless nights and fever dreams.

	It is life?  Adulthood?  (Too trite.)

	Contrived.  It is an expanse ... a twisting

	stretch, a surface in 3 dimensions.

	Mountains.  Foothills.  Riverbeds.  Forests.

	My landscape.  My mind or my life,

	I do not know where the separation lies.

	A textured map of color coded escalations.

	Melanin.  Mucus.  Nailbeds.  Colorization?

	Perhaps texturization is the wave of the future:

		we will reach out

		to screens full of made-up worlds and feel

		their lives move slowly or quickly

		to the end of the film.




	Spun, drawn gold connections?

	(Again, too cliched.)

	There is no grounding, no traceable ancestry.

	My history is dirt.  It is american

	and I have no choice

	in this, just as I have no choice in 

	the color of my skin.

	Bite.  Breed.  Breathe.  Bleed.

	The portrait we paint over bare bones,

	the structure of survival in base colors,

	is how we want to see our selves.

	How we want the world to see us.

	Cheeks tinted to look prettier, livelier, alert.



	I must take what I am, my form,

	create my past -- those details of my lineage

	that have passed down to me courage and strength --

	and write my own journey.

	(Tedious.  Highbrow.  Poetic in the worst sense.

	It is freedom but it is also abandonment.)

	This is the loss.  And the gain.

	We glide and soar ... (too romantic)

	We float, perhaps, because there is nothing

	to tie us down,

	to wrap thin arms around us,

	pull us into family graves.

	Some of us are stocking up on

	tiny gossamer scales,

	some on lizard leather,

	some on feathers and wax.

	It is time to ascend.

				Kelly J. Cooper
				4/29/92
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