The search goes on for BEing. There is a sense of lossness in the search expressed most eloquently and poignantly. (Basically from a Christian point of view it is in surrender rather than search that we truly find ourselves -- our BEing.)

Damn, you're good. That's exactly what I've been thinking about lately.

Yes, we are our own worst enemies. Eventually we lead ourselves back to the inner being we know. Good work, Ashok, I've been wondering when I'd see another one of your poems...missed your comments and poems.

This is excellent.. relatable & telling. Great work!

i hear and understand. of course, which level i understand upon is subject to debate.

This poem of the series is very bleak, very painful, but very meaningful and yes, even hopeful between the lines. How hopeful? Well it is hopeful in the very fact that the subject is fully aware of his horrific situation, and does seem determined to find himself, that is, to find his intending self. He is aware that “A dark vacant void makes for a bleak inheritance from the course of my formatory age…I vagabond meaninglessly in search of a voice I can claim as mine” – yes, the beauty amidst all this darkness and terror of SEEING that one is not in control and has no choices is the realization itself. The realization is the first step. The intending voice is there, but weak compared to the rest of those selves at the helm of affairs, “sometimes I do overhear it speak as it contemptuously negates all my surface achievements” – but this voice is only clearly heard “sometimes” and yes because the ‘others’ are so much stronger having so many more energy sources by which to operate. Yes, the irony is that “in my endeavor to BE…I outdistance myself from myself” – to be I AM is to distance one’s self from I AM THEM in an effort to eradicate them permanently. One must battle those other selves within by distancing himself from them and undoing their associations, but they do fight hard against the undoing, and “pronouncing all the possibilities of my existence in a voice anonymous” – a voice not of the self one intends to BE, but “speaking from the crowd within” – the distancing and undoing in and of itself makes those ‘others’ even stronger and more difficult to battle as they fight for their existence to persist, “my misguided hands strangulate my own throat”. Yes, this is not just any small battle, it is THE BATTLE for LIFE…it is the only battle left to fight, and one must realize that “the very dwelling I search for” is there, inside us and it is our death to “drift…away…following a beaten path,” for I AM, and not THEM. That’s what I saw. I don’t know if it’s very clear or how many times I repeated myself, but it will do hahahaha. Wonderful series Ashok, truly.