If I were a man, like Jesus, Napoleon or Hitler,

then I would be already free.

Existing only in art and photograph,

still sheltered in subconscious life.

Free with branes and the dust of the universe.

It is long, it is brief.

Time quickly filled and passing.

Events, some tragic, some empty,

some captured by memory, some not.

Illegitimate and naked,

void of all moral imagination;

nothing left of my father now,

poisoned by life on earth.

Nothing left but this photograph.

All there is are killers, lovers,

no true creators, preservers, just destroyers.

Killed by love.

No noble truths, no consequential rights.

This life on earth.

It is all we know,

honest in supreme reality.

Lives of billions built on faith,

on unadmitted science.

It is all we have, and each other.

Our strange journey began at the edge of winter.

There was a denial of kisses, exquisite coldness.

Life, stark and frank,

filled with cannibals of the land.

The weak and innocent, still brutalized,

still hesitation in defense,

no admittance of obligation.

Imprisoned by this terrible beauty

of life on earth.