FINGERPRINT FACE

Today I saw a picture of a fingerprint face,
And I thought I was Dorian Gray.
My suspicions wouldn’t go away,
Though I tried to laugh off the sight:
“Is his tie on too tight,” I jeered,
“Or did he tie on one too many last night?”

It was more fundamental than that.
He didn’t have eyes,
But he stared at me so hard
From the center of his whorl,
That the world spun out of control.

Vertigo! Falling down, down, down,
From the ivory tower!

He had one black ear and one Caucasian,
Symbolic of the strife that makes the world go ‘round.

I continued to speculate…

Perhaps a vortex had been formed
Between consciousness and its objects—
The two holding together the one,
The one disintegrating into an abyss
That sucks everything into its nothingness?

It is just as though God’s thumb came down
At the moment you started to pray,
Squashing your visage as if it were clay.
Now you can be assured
You are created in His image.

FINGERPRINT FACE

But look again—
It seems that you are a semi-transparent man.
The bricks in the wall behind you
Show through your figure.
You’re not as solid as you want to be.

How solid do you want to be?

It takes two to tango;
Two to make contact;
Two to make feelings on which desire depends.
Everything gets sucked into the vortex,
After being created by desire itself.

Such are our dreams of God and Self—
Who are dreams themselves.