I have nearly an entire shelf filled
With just books I’ve written.
Myriads of journals
Hand written in my sloppy English letters.
There is something annoying about reading it
Though. It’s like all the magic is gone.
I already know what it means.
To be frank, I can find some subconscious notion
To dwell on.
But, there isn’t the mystery of knowing someone else.
There isn’t the desire to find out who the person is you’re reading.
It, rather, is like looking into a mirror.
Vainly, you can like how your hair is combed—
Always backward—
You can admire your jaw bone
Or your personal facial structure.
Really, it’s the same kind of vanity.
A more loving mystery is in writing the thing.
In putting it to words,
Immortalizing it in ink.
Then someone can read you
Do the thing you enjoy while reading others.
Reality is very strange, how we love our
Image… the vain among us.
Personally, I love someone else’s thoughts.
They, with some other’s
Bounce, collide, battle wits.
Tolstoy with Emerson.
Orwell with Conspiracy Theorists.
Fascists with To Kill a Mockingbird.
Battle they do, the Russian Wisdom
With American. The Old Wisdom
With New Fears. The modern rebel
With the ancient wisdom of Joseph.
But frankly, finding them is more a treasure to me
Synthesizing them; showing how modern theories
Are bald-naked compared to the masters of ancient yesterday.
How Taoism states there is.
How Christianity gives a name to what Lao Tsu claimed was unnamed.
How modern day philosophers get every presumption wrong.
How Postmodernists were intentionally blind.
Frankly, though, they must battle their unending wars in literature.
But, let me rather find the soldiers.
I’ll pit them against one another and predict their futures.
I’d much rather the battle be in metaphor
Than with actual sticks and stones.
At the very most, reading myself is not going to dig up
Ancient treasures.
It, rather, is just a way of reminding me
Where I had come.
From Anarcho-Socialism to discovering the Platonic Form of Word.
Rather, the intellectual journey we all make
If we’re responsible about our education.
Many keep journals.
So do I.
B. K. Neifert 