PROMPT: Most Important

Daily writing prompt
What is the most important thing to carry with you all the time?

Heart and brain tie. Without the former I’m not alive; without the later I am not.

PROMPT: Describe Yourself

Daily writing prompt
How would you describe yourself to someone?

Of middling tallishness, perpetually perplexed, and independently impoverished.

PROMPT: Tattoo

Daily writing prompt
What tattoo do you want and where would you put it?

I have no use for any tattoo, anywhere, thank you very much.

I’ll leave it to the teens and twenty-somethings to believe there is some image or phrase that will always and forever capture their essence. I’ve been through too many versions of myself and came out accepting the Buddhist / Taoist notion that everything, everywhere [even the self — if there even is such a thing] is in constant flux.

Quest [Lyric Poem]

Is it every person's dream
To be what one is,
And not what one seems?

Or would one rather be
The creature of one's dreams --
Who no one ever sees?

Or should one be the best
Of real and imagined:
The host and the guest?

How much of who we are
Is the views of others
And how much is ours?
(And is any of it
Written in the stars?)

Picture Horse [Lyric Poem]

Stacks and stacks
of wooden plaques:
Prayers on front,
Art on the back.

Each a wish
and a dream?
More an expression,
or so it seems.

Whatever prayer
may be writ,
There’s always
something
more to it.

A need to show
one’s unique soul:
To tell the world
that one is whole.

A life reduced
to a shingle:
Multitudes,
to a single.

“The Very Self” by Walter de la Mare [w/ Audio]

Clear eyes, beneath clear brows, gaze out at me,
Clear, true and lovely things therein I see;
Yet mystery, past ev'n naming, takes their place
As mine stay pondering on that much-loved face.

“One’s-Self I Sing” by Walt Whitman [w/ Audio]

One's-Self I sing, a simple separate person,
Yet utter the word Democratic, the word En-masse.

Of physiology from top to toe I sing,
Not physiognomy alone nor brain alone is
worthy for the Muse, I say the Form complete
is worthier far,
The Female equally with the Male I sing.

Of Life immense in passion, pulse, and power,
Cheerful, for freest action form'd under the laws
divine,
The Modern Man I sing.

Ambiguous Living [Lyric Poem]

I am not now.
I was not then.
That makes it sound
Like I've never been.

But I once was
And will be again,
But who can know
Just where & when?

Masquerade [Lyric Poem]

Welcome to the masquerade!
   It is your home from now on.
 The you you were will soon fade
   as you play out the long con.

Welcome to the masquerade!
   Where all faces are untrue.
 We are just the roles we've played,
    not the selves we never knew.

Welcome to the masquerade!
   Do you know just who I am?
 I'm only what I've conveyed.
   It's the "real me" that's a sham! 

Self Speculation [Free Verse]

What's a Self?

...a soul?
...a set of neuronal activity?
...an illusion?
...a ghost in a machine?
...the body, the brain, &
the whole enchilada?

Memories can be false,
and some always are.

Thoughts can be illusory,
and some always are.

Feelings can be flighty & fickle,
and some always are.

If one loses a little toe,
is one a diminished self,
or still whole?

What about if one loses
a pinky toe-sized mass of brain?

So many possibilities:

...death,
...changed personality,
...emotionlessness,
...speech pathologies,
...blindness,
...memory loss,
...coma,
...no discernable change,
and so on.

What's a Self?
...a dog?
...an embryo?
...an AI?
...an extraterrestrial?

What is a self?

Am I a self?