I am a sample of millions, billions. I am this sample soaking in these vivid visions and complexities of minds lost at sea. These eyes gaze long and absent mindedly at nothing, and for moments on end, realize that everything is familiar and alien at once. These eyes, tormented by meaninglessness, seek that which they know not. What the hell are we doing here? Who are all these beings floating through these spaces? Once upon a hazy memory, home was a shape-shifting mask bent out of proportion. Once upon a memory blooming, home was the love of life, the love of this life. Once upon a wisp of smoke hanging in top spaces, now there, now streaming into oblivion. Once upon looking at life beneath still waters harboring second layers within, whispering, waiting…Once upon third decades of vibrant lives beaming new lands into space. Once upon thirty-five lands and counting…these eyes roam and dream, hopelessly in love with a universe bursting from sublime incantations. Soft snow falling to the tick-tocking of grandfather clocks, lips smacking to the exquisite taste of strawberry cheese cake, eyes lost in stunning sunsets streaming from tropical domains where jungles sing lullabies to wanton imaginations, and sea-sun-sand-and-breeze-music merge to set senses alight. And you saw the fields and they were speckled with daffodils. And you who dwells in the recesses of the mind are known for what you seem to be.
Wild child of insatiable needs,
you have been blessed.
You called it,
and it came,
and it was nothing.
You summoned it and it was that
which you believed existed but
would not, could not manifest. That which is
formed, yet dented in form
and out of reach.
Now, it floats through your consciousness like smoke on the rafters, now blanketing filmy space, now gone, seeking emersion. It’s there and it’s not. Yet it stays around to partake in the shared anguish of bored existence. No one here is happy. Contentment is boredom. These eyes struggle to grasp the elusive essence of being. Another manifestation of you have no clue what I’m going on about, do you? Neither do I. Make of it what you will, death wishes that benefit only the dead can be denied. Yet, Life adorns herself in tailored robes from Hope. Now, she floats through our consciousness like strange spaces begetting beings. Spaces letting beings choose what to be. And on-on we go, watching uncertain fingers reaching out,
reaching for, but never finding
new strings to attach to arms gone loose.
Once upon being hollowed out by existence,
the pressure to belong sent you stepping out of the loop
to ponder humanity’s way of being,
a way of being so completely alien to you…
Intimacy so false,
Your antennae recoiled to savor the bliss of solitude.

 

 

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Mercy Ananeh-Frempong is a development consultant and technical/copy editor from Ghana, currently based in Cambodia, Southeast Asia. Mercy’s poems have been published on Burning House Press and in two anthologies by The Writers’ Project of Ghana: Look where you have gone to sit and According to sources. She tweets at @mersy711 and blogs at The Griffin’s Inkpot.