I was reading yesterday,

something I sought for its promise

to uplift, encourage. It didn’t.

It caused me, instead, 

to recoil deep inside,

to wince. 

Ouch.

What just happened?

On the surface it seemed

so “of the light.”

Below the words, however,

within the neat lines of 

carefully crafted text 

lay triggers. 

Triggers that I had not realized,

until that very moment, were

planted in my soil long, 

long ago

waiting for fire

to burst open. 

ARMAGEDDON

had nothing whatever

to do with what was printed

on the screen in front of me,

but it is what I read.

But almost as instantaneously,

my mind blew space into the word

to read: ARM AGED: DONe.

We’ve been living, I suddenly saw,

every day of our lives on planet earth, 

with this mushroom cloud of doom 

hanging over our human heads. 

Like any one of a number of apocalyptic

annihilations portended to befall us 

in the epic clash between 

breath and death.

Fate. Karma. Manifested destiny,

call it what we will. It’s there. Just lying there,

on the event horizon — looming. The dark,

as ever, seeming to hold greater sway

than the light of our days these days. 

And so like the circus clown, 

we paint a happy face on the dread

we wear inside.

We hide from it, it from us.

For we have yet to unlock

its hold on our carotid.

Bleak? Yes. It is.

True? It has to be

for this is the story 

that keeps getting told

in countless ways over 

eons of existence: 

the end is nigh.

I was suddenly aware

of the fear running through

my veins, my mind, my... 

RECORD SCRATCH

(sound effect)

…wait a minute. 

What am I saying?

Fear is just a feeling.

Triggered by a thought.

If thoughts are things,

as they do appear to be,

why can’t I make this fear

anything I want it to be?

It is manufactured, produced, 

sold, even, by me! Why can’t I shift

its shape into anything other than the

mushroom-clouded boogey man

foreshadowing the tragic end

of the world?

Puppy chow! Jelly beans!

Rubber bands! Unicorns!!

Iridescent monolithic 

polychromatic 

butterflies!!!

The list goes on.

Becoming ever more

magical. Why not?

Lest we make

dystopia 

real.

Alive in each and 

every thought we court

about our gloomy condition, 

and its "inevitable" consummation;

in every moment we feel these thoughts 

of fear and anxiety and foreboding 

making this story de facto.

Biblical. Canonical. 

It is not the story we want to keep

telling ourselves, each other.

However well-meaning the 

cause, the effect is a train called 

the doomsday express.

It’s not a comfortable ride.

So let’s stop buying tickets. 

We can find it in ourselves,

our minds, electromagnetically

fed by our mighty hearts, to see our world

in a whole new way each and every 

moment of our gift of a day. 

No more bent on the trauma of drama, 

but spiraling round a new point of view

that sees the light even in 

the darkest hour.

It is a choice. 

One we are free to make.

A story we get to tell in real time

— this holy NOW of consciousness.

Shakespeare wrote in Twelfth Night: 

“There is no darkness but ignorance.” 

This lack of knowledge 

is about ourselves, and what we

hold deep-down to be real — something, out there,

to be feared? Or something, everywhere we look, 

to be loved, marveled at and revered 

because like us, 

it is here?

We are energy

having a corporeal

experience. Energy flows

from a source, through a channel. 

We are that source, we are

that channel.

We are light

filling an opacity of matter. 

What dulls us or makes us shine, 

is ours, freely, to mete out.

We make the reality

we see the world to be

— or not to be —

full of beautiful possibility,

or loaded with grave alarm; 

armed to the teeth or 

unarmed, proffering

only peace.

Not that easy? 

Perhaps. But I’d say

easy isn’t that easy, it

just looks that way.

The physicist 

looking for the particle

finds the particle; looking

for waves, same setup,

he finds waves.

Reality is what

we imagine it 

to be.

It is a force of will

that we must summon,

good will to hold lightly 

— like a hummingbird —

a new vision for

a new earth.

Today I saw blue birds 

and snowflakes.

Blessed sights, 

both.

Let go, I heard them say. 

God is in the details.

The moon

has just reached

her fullness. It is the

perfect time to release

what no longer serves.

Let’s let 

dystopia 

go.

Let Armageddon

die in the only place

it ever lived: our minds.

Let it compost into

a new narrative

that’s happy

ever after.

Final word?

abracadabra…

—Eve Moore

Photo credit: Eve Moore

**

Eve Moore: Once a professional writer of advertising, I saw the light & it has shown me words of a different nature. And so I take them down & offer them up. And all is well.

This poem was submitted exclusively to CrystalWind.ca by Eve Moore.