self-estranged

For me

experience it self

has become anthropomorphic.

I don’t know other people

from experience per say.

I have versions of them.

We have contracts

with each other

that are in constant negotiations.

Generally accepted

as in meeting expectations

accordingly.

I assign attributes to them

as they secretly act out for me.

Nothing being exchanged

need be original

and certainly not

necessarily authentic.

We cross assign predictability.

We share the distraction

and coping with life.

We are mutually under siege.

Because we are self-conscious

about being self-conscious,

we rarely share directly

what is assumed as hidden

but most humanly common ground.

Those moments of unassailed intimacy

are the treasures that form the bond.

The rest of the time is tolerance

or concessionary binds.

Edits do come often

but are minimally attended

and left mostly unsaid.

I vaguely experience

the presence of others

as animated beings

honoring their spirit directly.

Hardly anyone agrees to do that.

If and when that happens,

it is eaten up

like a nectar of choice

and soon devoured

as an event

of worthy consumption.

Sure it happens

and richly appreciated

when it does.

But it is not

a natural ongoing flow.

Whatever sets it off

even for myself

is a curiosity unto itself.

It becomes a self-hobby.

The forever search

for passion of being.

Something so unscripted

that it effortlessly appears

and self is present

and shared with others

spontaneously.

Otherwise, we are captured

in binds

of overflows and overwhelms.

We are preoccupied

with busy displays

and measured efforts

as result and reward.

We are seduced into story

and manage a write, a live,

and an ongoing edit.

And that is exactly how

we became anthropomorphic

even unto our selves.

We live under

self-imposed assignment.

Expectation reinforces it to be.

No one is spontaneously free.

Even now spontaneity

can be a disguised form

of reactionary venting.

We so appreciate and love it

when children, young enough

are around.

They fountain as themselves.

They are original humans.

They cannot be

anthropomorphized!

They give too much

to be seen as commodities.

We are all suppressed

of our child rock stars lives!

We stage ourselves

rather than accept

the stage we are.

We should not be versionary

when visionary dwells within.

Permission is its own mission!

The rest will naturally

and spontaneously occur.

It is in our devotion to absence

that we do not naturally appear.

We present as image.

There is this thickly caste

around us all

as our public persona.

Where did that get

so overly developed?

Yikes, a method of protection?

How strange

to be so self-estranged

and longing . . .