Generational.

By the light of Heaven!
How can we crave what we cannot see?
Without an authentic Absolute,
Why is it that we ache for authenticity?

Each generation is a reaction to the one that previously came to be.
I can't remember if I go boom or  X, Y, Z.
I do remember that I depended on dependency.
I felt good in fear.
I felt good with walls too big to scale
In a corrupt system too big to fail.
I felt good with consumables marketed and packaged well.
Bad things that tasted convenient,
Convenience tasted good as hell.

The sleek, the clever, the ease,
Were confirmation that I could do what I please.
There was comfort in the layers:
The distance between me and the source.
The bureaucracy insulated from fault,
The retailer protected from remorse.
It was all (intentionally) too much to take on.
Hope might have made me act, but I felt too far gone.
I felt like a boy in a grown up plastic suit:
Fully loaded, yet not equipped,
Fully endowed, yet destitute.
I put layers between the creator and me
And the world aided.
Feeling felt too scary to feel,
And I wanted the feel faded.

So my generations time is fading gone.
Yes, please let's move on.
 Now to the new perennial,
To the Z and to the Millennial.
What can a generation do when there is no one left to trust?
They take things into their own hands,
Though crumbling, they believe in rust.
No preservatives, no packaging, just unmarketable dirt,
Fair trade belt and hand made shirt.

The fuzzy crackle of the vinyl doesn't feel like a loss of fidelity.
Sweet analog truth, absent of digital reconstitution,
Gladly suffer lack of clarity to avoid the prostitution.
His pickles come from his cucumbers grown in his soil.
Vintage vinegar, rooftop dill,
His strained oil, his free range boil.
His pie cools on his window sill.
He knows the whiskey because he reaps the rye,
Imported Indian ink paints his own sky.

When I was a boy and had a bike, 10 speeds was the best you could do.
Now one fixed gear is the standard,
The oldest ideas made shiny and new.
And now why isn't it better,
Better to be more?
Because more breeds layers,
And layers numb the core.

Get to it, remove the layers.
Let transparency awaken.
Lift up the grungy
Redeem the forsaken.
Sincerity through Irony, in it's poetic, abstract best,
Is an attempt to get the over-indulged completely undressed.
Peel all the layers back,
Get to the root.
Will you find a god of your own construction?
One you built to suit?

Almost there now, one layer more to get to the real.
One big wound left to open, to get to the heal.
Our souls ache for the most basic deal,
We want it to be in our own hands,
Preferring decay to the hermetic seal.
But our efforts only take us so far,
You can't quite keep from depending on dependency
And sooner or later everyone lets you down.
Nobility gives way to the petty,
Compulsion pushes out the steady.

Everyone is soon to be distrusted.
"Are the farmer's hands dirt encrusted?
Does my coffee maker roast his own?
Are my strawberries really organically grown?
Is my wheat ground by stone?
Do my chickens have a lovely home?
Is my bag conscientiously sown?
Can I even trust the flesh of my bone?
Am I authentic?
Am I to be trusted with my beliefs?
Shall I bash myself onto the sharpness of religious coral reefs?"
Belief, Religion, so many layers to comply,
Good Lord, they obscure what they labor to magnify:
A great scaffolding making truth hard to see,
Beyond the priests, pastors, rules and liturgy.

I hunger to be sustained.
And was malnourished by what I had kneaded.
On my own, it's never enough
"More!" my soul pleaded.
"What will it take, how can I atone?"
"You tell me I can't live by bread alone!"
Yes I need something bolder, something richer,
Something that I can't quite express,
Has it always been there in this Pilgrim's Progress?
How can surrender be the answer?
How can sacrifice be true?
They are the only things that remain
Irreducible whether by passion or by fool.

Jesus.
Jesus Remains.

He was there when the world was new,
The time that our hearts remember and crave.
He was there to show us Love in sacrifice,
Victory in the grave.
He will be there again, when all Hope seems gone
And we finally cry out to a savior that has been there all along.