Existential to Existential

This is a spoken word poem that I wrote for school last year. I hope you like it! Soon I will create a YouTube video of the speaking and embed it on this page.

 

How do I know that I’m real?

How do I know that I’m alive?

Can I know whether I’m real?

Is that possible?

 

And when I asked him this, he shrugged.

What does it matter?

‘It means everything I said.

What are we without ourselves?

 

A slave, even a freed slave, is always an underman 

Whatever he thinks, it’s the truth.

 

The truth

 

Something rings out in the landscape,

A farmyard bell? The sound of a church?

Or not?

Am I dreaming? Is it real?

 

The wave breaks.

Is it random? Is it real?

What is random?

Am I dreaming?

 

 

He says it doesn’t matter

Is that because he cares,

Does he say that just for me?

 

The sun is not just a light, he says.

The sun is our sun

In our sandbox, it’s just for us

 

Just 

For

Us

 

If it’s not real, does it matter?

If it’s wrong, is that bad?

 

And I don’t know why—

       No time to think of a reaction

       Don’t know what to say

       Or maybe I actually agree

 

I tell him ‘yes’

‘Now I understand,’

 

We must fix what we have.

 

Because is this the world that we want

The desolation that we have

Aren’t there better things we can make?

 

 

And to master the world

We must first master ourselves

We must achieve first to be together

At least, then, we can ride to our death

And be proud, that at least we have achieved

Something that we can be proud of in the end

 

Even if all it is is peace with what’s inside.

 

But if we come to this and still aren’t overturned

Even if all that remains is a legacy

We can do better, to pause is the devil

 Who’ll bring death to all we leave for when we return

…even when we sleep

 

And the final reality sets in.

We’ll never be the same

 

So much we could do if we all were together

Why do we not, I do ask myself?

The light comes to us, now we need to unlatch it

The wave is breaking, so why don’t we catch it?

 

 

The beast has awoken, 

And now it’s for us to tame it.

The dragon belches up,

In forms of fumes, bleak smells and darkness

 

 

The end has now spoken

And we can’t even blame it

Maybe it falls asleep at music

Maybe at a song, sung with lyre by its mother

 

Many men would bring it down,

With spears and axes and bullets of lead

But they would ask for credit

They would become the beast.

 

The truth is all there, for those that may see it

Those who break prophecies fall, that is reason

We need not think, we need now to be it…

 

We must look further.

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©2021 Louis Bourgault