Now, right now

I dwell in future doom

In which

What could be

Sprawls out

As a dismal landscape.

I’m in pain,

A heaviness rides upon my back

The now

Is a polluted stream

With no hope

Or respite from darkness.

–

For some time

I believe this truth,

The fact darkening the now,

Which I think must be endless.

Then, I wonder,

I query this “truth”

Threatening to pull me asunder,

And lift the curling edge

Of my feeling,

Glimpsing a flicker of light.

–

Could this feeling really be

But the consequence of thought,

My thought

Projected out

And so colouring

The whole world?

Could this world

Be but a blank canvas

And my thought

The paint on the pallet

And the brush in my hand?

Could it really be

That I am master artist

Applying tint

And shade

To all I see,

Reality fluxing before my eyes

As thoughts

Conjure feelings

Morphing under the spell of my eye

And dancing to my every preconception?

–

And if so,

What does that mean for truth

And a “real world” out there,

And the me

Who thought himself buffeted

By forces beyond

And things

Other than himself?