I Can Die With Joy

I Can Die With Joy
© Surazeus
2022 12 20

If I want to walk to the mountain top 
I will dive to the bottom of the sea 
and there find the blind demon of my heart 
still lurking in the shadows of despair, 
then I will grow angel wings of desire 
and fly up to the palace in the clouds. 

Yet I walk from the front door of my house 
and wait at the bus stop in morning fog 
to ride the bus through maze of crowded streets 
then sit all day in the small cubicle 
where I organize facts into reports 
so I can earn money to pay my bills. 

I work all day for stranger in the tower 
to earn enough money in my account 
so I can eat and sleep safe in my bed 
instead of starving in the alleyway 
because my hands are gears that operate 
complex global food-production machine. 

My ancestors have, for two million years, 
hunted wild animals and gathered herbs 
then herded tame animals and farmed crops 
through endless cycles of eating and sleeping 
while they generate clones of deathless genes 
so I feel them all alive in my brain. 

Though I have, for four hundred million years, 
been evolving ever more complex forms, 
fish to lizard to mouse to cat to chimp 
to wingless angel, who can talk and think, 
composing world view from facts I perceive, 
I wonder why I strive to become God. 

The supernatural deity of God 
is designed as concept of ideal Man 
by wild imagination of my brain 
that projects image of the human being 
at mindless mirror of the universe 
so I conceive God I strive to become. 

Instead of getting on the bus today 
I walk down signless road of destiny 
to strum guitar that Mercury designed 
and sing weird anguish of my aching heart 
while striving toward the distant mountain top 
till I get lost in endless maze of myths. 

Though I never grow those wings of desire 
to fly beyond bounds of our spinning Earth 
I walk with two legs sea to shining sea 
and sing weird story of my search for truth 
in epic poem about philosophers 
so I can die with joy since I have lived.