What Would Happen to ME
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What would happen to ME
If I simply let go of it all
If, simply as simply could be,
Stopped banging my head on the wall,
And let it all drop fancy free
A fat rolling head on the floor.
What would happen to me?
And what would all those people roar?
Mammas and papas, uncles and aunties,
Grammas and grandpas and teachers and preachers,
All the right honorable authorities
Insisting they're right, and not me
How much disapproval would I feel,
How much disapproval could I take.
Feeling them collectively all shake
Their sage grey heads all muttering
Beneath their hairy breath
Thinking I am bad for even thinking of such death.
And even if I pushed them all away,
And then became a rebel with a cause,
Or maybe none
Would I ever pause,
And ask myself against whom I rebel?
And what about rebellion makes me strong?
And where it is that I must not belong?
Does being on the outside make me right?
Does being on the inside make me wrong?
Or is it just the other way around?
What is in the fabric of it all
That makes me think I need a precious piece
Of hallowed ground, a place where I can drive
A stake into the ground,
Of this hard beating heart that I have bound
Up with the head of something I must make
Identity.
What would happen to me?
What would happen if I gave a yell,
Long and loud enough to pull quite down
The fabric of my own reality,
My very nearly perfect half a hell,
Or half a heaven as the case may be?
What if I would pull THAT curtain down?
Who'd be left to run the big machine,
Billow smoke and holler "I am OZ,
OZ the Great and Terrible,
Heed Thou ME!"
And do be sure to write the whole thing down!"
What would happen if there WAS no me
Sitting in the middle of it all
All the hoot and holler, all the smoke,
Sitting in the middle of the joke?
What would happen to me?
What would happen if I finally climbed
The very highest mountain I could find,
And viewed the widest vista I could see,
And walked up to the very final ledge,
And contemplated life upon the edge
Of this particularity,
This reality
This peculiar hedge
And jumped because I heard a single voice
Sing soft and low of wild divinity
And looking at a gathering of crows
Decided I could fly, insanely free,
Into the boundless ocean blue of mind.
What would happen to me?
Would I forget the way back home?
The way to kiss the kids goodnight?
Forget the difference between red and green
Coming to a traffic light?
What would happen to me?
And what would happen,
What would happen,
What would happen if I then forgot
That everything is hard and I am slow
So slow to learn and quicker to forget?
Would I forget the places I must go
Would I forgot the people I must see.
Forget that IT is high and I am low?
What would I regret?
And what would happen to me?
And what would such forgetting
Get me in the end?
Could I, would I, make myself pretend
Pretend I know, pretend I do not know
The answer to the question "Who are you?"
Pretend it's not a mirror, nor a show
Shimmering above, beneath and through
The endless rolling waves of bluest sea?
What would happen to me?
And what would happen then to me at last
If I read a book and let it speak
Its peace to me, then simply put it down.
And let its starseed simmer in my brain
Not watched, nor thought about, again
Until the hidden seed took root and glared
In rocket rainbow arcs across that blue
and heaving ocean glass
Spurting leaves and branches as it grew
Itself all through the infinite blue pane.
To exactly whom
At that point could I possibly complain
My heart out to?
And to which channel would I then attune,
And who else's message would I seek,
Whose answers would I gather and whose prayers would I croon,
If all those rainbow arcs began to speak
All at once, of everything they knew
Or anything at all they wanted to?
Would I turn that pane into a wall?
Or would I let it fall and shatter, finally
Into unending multi-colored shards
Of nothing much at all?
So what WOULD happen to me
If I closed my eyes and jumped
Off that final ledge,
That final hump
That rudely juts into infinity,
That hump I call my very own
Identity?
Would I fall and smash into the ground,
Scream into air that silently slides round
This face about to shatter on a rock,
This flesh about to tear upon a tree?
What would happen to ME?
(c) Paul Roberts 1999
