Summum Bukmun Umyum

Like me
Around the globe

Searching eyes — seeking heads — awaken
Reach for words, images, future possibilities
Sitting and walking here
Imagining themselves there
For this to end
And that to begin

What is literacy —

But baptism
Into a world of promises
Etched, painted, scrawled
Across posters, books, screens

And a descent — an enrapturement —
Into the world of mind —
Forsaking
The unspeakable simplicity
The spontaneity — of senses

Disparaging the blanket of air
Familiar sounds, the cascade of sights
The stable ground
Stretched beneath my feet

I live as in a prison cell
In a space without walls, windows, or doors
Yet detained within —
Condemned from without —

In despair
As if senseless, dumb, and blind
Unable to feel through my skin
I clutch and grasp
With non-existent hands in non-existent air
Behind my eyes —
Words — that lay before me
Worlds —

Another air — unbreathable
A sky, untouchable
Ground, uninhabitable
Where an imagined me
Would ascend, descend
Arrive, amass, and live
Unbounded

Like a dream, unborn
But seen
There — I would be
Deaf, dumb, and blind —
To the world
Of God

In a world —
Of me