The Descent of Man

I cannot speak from outside of the only things I know,
these things I have always believed in.
I know of little else, outside of these tenets:
they define my perspective, and thus, my blindness.
I hear voices of purported truth, from without
that seek to appeal, and dictate the nature of my being.
I listen, in silence, but not in acquiescence:
I am tempestuous.

For, what is the nature of truth, I wonder:
am I not both, the object and the probe
of my investigations;
are not others better equipped
to reflect and proselytize on these truths?
But my disdain shows.

What use are words,
from fallen men
from those who meandered
got tired and called
their port of call
a home — their home!
spun a tale, spun a cosmogony
composed an entire etiology
for soundness
and to salve, salvage, and conceal
the remnants of a now-dead childhood.

Fallen men
proselytizing.
Appealing to universal truths
to logic, to symmetry,
and to the deepest fears
in every man’s heart.

I listen, in silence
but I am violence within.
I am violent now
for a lost future
when I have given up, and
am myself fallen
and scarcely know it.

Appeals to plausibility,
symmetry, and reasonableness
cut the deepest —
for I envision myself
a reasonable man.

I wonder what matters in the end.
Questions of who martyrs whom
and the nature of the peace that is
promised, but is not entailed.

Would I rather be
the father or the son
the griever or the grieved
the feather or the firework
the artificer or …

It may not be up to me,
they proclaim.
I am one of their kind,
they claim.

Some part of me quietly utters:
“I am the ubermensch.
And I will live or die by that name.”