What is left behind

-The price of waking is innocence, innocence in this world
is precious. But innocence is soon stolen by awareness,
the search for knowledge, searching to know.
This is where it begins, searching, attempting to understand.
Understanding leads to pride, that one does know.
Knowing without understanding leads to the suffering and the scratching,
scratching at the tiles that remain unearthed, the truth of everything,
somewhere in there we find what we can attain: words and thoughts.
Thoughts lead us to further confusion, confusion that is not easily dealt with,
we seek out means of ending the spinning, try to pause the movement of this earth
try to hold things still, try to feel, something other than lost
and we drink the nectar of life, imbibe the passions that we can feel.
While we search for feeling, an easy distraction, the taste of others;
we try to evade the ever pending doom, we do not realize its true wage;
we spin in circles, attempt to perceive the blurry images passing by,
experience the time that leaves us like people leave us, for whatever.
Feel the true self and wince at its semblance, how could this be us,
how could this be? Try to adjust our perception, try to change the intricate parts
of our existence, question what we know and whether knowing is knowledge or wisdom;
we search for wisdom in the words that whisper, speaking of a place we’ve never been.
An island, a paradise where things stand still, and time does not pass,
where we cannot move, but moving, there, is not necessity, simply being is enough.
And where is this place? The moments that give us hope, that fan the flame
these moments, so brief that time does not remember, does not hold their place.
And as we search we cannot find the markings of their passing, nothing concrete
just the image that sparks in our mind, a flash bulb, broken but still burning,
a fading scent that draws us near, only to disappear when we are close.
People come and people go, disappearing in time, leaving sediment,
which we can feel, but cannot find, an invisible stone beneath us
words are spoken, promises are broken, and we remain
breaking in time, letting go of everything, we thought we knew,
trying once more to regain a sense of understanding,
a sense of growing, as if growth could be marked in time as if there were
a marker, constant and non eroding, like every stone that disappears,
sinking to the bottom of here; unseen but not gone, adding to the weight
of conscience, each step taken, taking on sand, each footstep fallen,
scratching against the pebbles of the journey, the gravel, twisting path
that we cannot see, yet follow, as if someone once told us this was
the way, pointing us in a direction from which we dare not stray;
so much time spent so much pain gathered, we honor the sores
of our souls, and endure, continuing to travel, footfall after footfall.
Leaving with each heavy step a part of ourselves we will not recover, if we live
until the clouds have journeyed home and the moon has lost its shine,
the oceans stilled and we walk no longer over stone covered roads,
but across the rivers and into the seas; even if this should happen,
the scattered self will never again be the whole with which we started,
with which we came into this waking moment, this innocence lost and this
ever troubling awareness, that keeps us spinning round and round, dizzy
and confused, tired and bruised, gasping for a breath of something
other than ourselves, a thought that we may never again have,
like the scattered self, the cluttered mind,
we as well are scratched by time.