THE GHOSTS IN THE MACHINE

'I need to find my true self!'

But there is no true self.

What we think of as

ourselves, the core of our identity,

has the constancy of a mirage -

an ever-shifting pattern reforming,

dissolving, shaping, misleading.

Existence playing with possibilities.

Each day a new, changed

character emerges from sleep

assuring itself it has been

from the day of birth of the flesh

and shall only end

with the death of the body.

It misleads itself,

the poor moth set to live

a single day or less.

A distorting hall of mirrors

you are, a mirror for each day

of your life and the images

in each a true and fleeting

as every other.

You have no true self,

you are a succession of ghosts

inhabiting a machine of

flesh and blood and bone.

Each lasting that one day

or less, each period of sleep

a womb for the birth

of a new illusion of permanence,

a new moth.

06.07.2019