Shattered Moments. by Scott Thomas Outlar

Numb, stoned, silence of paradise –

everything gray, perfect, and peaceful.

No worries, no confusion, no need

for anything other than the entropic void.

Sitting under the Buddha Tree in Eden’s Garden,

receiving a double dose of mythological conversions

sent straight from the archetypal source

into my well weathered consciousness;

some might say it’s a soul,

but actually it’s wavelength frequencies

of embedded DNA data points in the form of vibrations

humming across the electrical tendrils

of a synchronized, interconnected web of infinite light.

The spiritual physics of the matter

explain the manifest totality of the illusion.

A revelation, an epiphany, an aha moment

gets shredded by an unkind angle of perception

as my peripheral vision catches movement

from outside the holy triangulated circle.

I see color pulsing inward,

I see Order breaking down,

I see Chaos gearing up for the next war,

I see gene swarm in the primordial soup,

I see fire raging from the underbelly,

I see storms flowing from a wasted skyline,

I see dog eat dog in the cage fight,

I see evolution pressing forward at all costs,

I feel the intensity of pressure mounting…

and then my dream is shattered

as the shutters of reality are released.

The poison of the Beast World

floods my synapses and veins,

polluting the core of what I thought possible

and slamming me with a hard dose of reality.

There is no escape from the biting lashes

of truth’s harsh winds;

we came from the dirt, the ash, the mud,

the clay … we are created from out

this firmament … and so, too, shall

we stay here, live here, die here.

From the cradle of the crescent river

to the yawning grave where the worms wait –

all that was, is, or ever shall be.

Scott Thomas Outlar hosts the site17Numa.com where links to his published poetry, fiction, essays, interviews, reviews, live events, and books can be found. His work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. His next collection, Abstract Visions of Light, is forthcoming in 2018 through Alien Buddha Press.