April 9 : Of Cages And Obnoxious Paint

And aren't we always confined
to cages (that we ourselves
have made, struggled to reach
and then locked ourselves in,
with the finality of passing
from a world to the next -
a gentle way of saying death)
and don't we always rot
in places which aren't really
where we wanted to be -
but are, still, somewhere
which in our ambition we
mistake as better than nowhere
(although nowhere specific might
really actually in some sense mean
everywhere, in all it's majesty)?

And I struggled to open that
bright yellow tube of paint
and I pulled and I teared up
I bit and yelled and scratched
I tried to cut it open with a blade
and twisted it up till it was a gory
mess (although it still looked beautiful
to me, lover of paint) and halfway
through this I checked the label
and it wasn't primary lemon yellow
(that was the color I knew I wanted)
it was really yellow ochre, and the outside
was simply a lie, inside it was a dirty
mustard, nowhere near a yellow at all
but still I fought, unwilling to accept
defeat (ah, human nature, is it not?)
and thoughtfully I let my face arrange
itself into the sorrow of not getting
what I wanted (although it wasn't true).

And what is it about us that makes us this way
fighting for things which we really (deep inside
and sometimes outside too) know aren't what
we need or even want or will accept at all?

And I've shut myself up in cages and
I struggle, sometimes, to remain in them
and why do I want myself to be constrained
when in the end I want to be somewhere
else (not here, perhaps not at all), and
inside I really know it yet still I let
myself bleed. And for what?