Asking for what I want

I wanted to hear

behind the questions,

to know where

they came from.

I wanted to understand

the construction

of the questions themselves,

to decode the language used,

to see what it really represented.

I wanted to go

into that environment

before it had words.

I didn’t want

the comfort of meaning

or the security

from how calmly it was spoken.

I wanted it

before it was tethered

to sensibility.

I wanted the initial smack

of impressions

before reassembly,

be it primal and raw.

I wanted to be at the level

where the sympathetic

and parasympathetic

nervous systems

take the first hit,

where the smallness

of one's self overloads.

I wanted to empathetically sit

in these little places

and feel

for the strategic flashpoints

that set them off.

I wanted to learn

that first person alphabet

however irrational

it has been life long forged.

I wanted to meet the self-guardian

and sense what it does

to protect

and yet interact with the world.

I wanted to find the engine room

however undisclosed,

somewhere between birth and death,

before their personality as wardrobe,

before self imposed rules as overlay,

before polite and proper,

where presence is,

before it is energetically complex.

I guess

I wanted to meet the spirit

of the being

rather than the self-consciousness

as being.

Was that asking too much?