THE ASCENT TO CONSCIOUSNESS

You, my casual friend,

are an illusion

impressed on the human mind

by society

and your own act

of self-creation -

which makes you a human being;

the illusion that the person

in all those photographs

is the same one,

that all the paraphernalia you carry

in your mind and outside it

forms a coherent whole,

a story with a single protagonist.

You, you think

you are the same

all the moments of the life

of the flesh

spinning through time.

Believe, my casual

friend, as we part,

in yourself. Not because

you are, but

because we are but animals

caught in time-loops without,

and an illusion of past

and an illusion of tomorrow

uplifts the animal to consciousness.

06.03.2018