Cloudy skies develop before my eyes

Obscuring the sun from sight

Eclipsed in the absence of light

Behind the waves is where the secrets lie

Few reach them but most lost their way

Sailing astray into the roaring waves

Soaring high over the horizon

Where the secrets are inscribed in

Itinerants searching endlessly

Obsessively seeking treasures at sea

Infinite thoughts flowing intuitively

Waiting for a flash of green

Gleaming from the sun remaining unseen

Pondering whether it’s only a dream

Here I lie on an island marooned

As the tide rolls in tune with the moon

Did I set sail too soon?

I ponder as the air echoes with loons

Filling the atmosphere with doom

As dusk arrives once again

Light dims over the land

Shadows arise from the caves

Summoned from their eternal graves

No longer detained from the sun’s rays

Hovering deranged over my estranged brain

Vengeful souls once slain

Left to die on this unforgiven terrain

I look up to the sky

Wishing I could fly

As wolves begin to cry

Am I blind?

Has it all been a lie?

Haunting revelations of the third eye

Where the sun no longer shines

A poem I wrote; Secrets of the Sea. It’s a journey we all take. Searching for the secrets in life, our purpose, and what the true meaning of life is for that matter. These are all difficult things for us to find because in life there seems to be too many questions and not enough answers. This is a journey that creative artists of all kinds struggle with especially painters, poets, writers, musicians etc. The struggle to discover their true purpose is a heavier burden for those seeking a career in ‘the arts’. This is likely due to the fact that technology holds such a powerful grip over today’s society which leaves a majority of artists finding themselves being overlooked. This hypnotizing grip produced by technology is likely responsible for the creative decline we are currently undergoing. The music industry of today is a perfect example of the apparent creative decline, not in terms of sound producing by any means however. I still think some modern-day music has excellent sound. It’s the deepness and meaning in music lyrics that has declined. If you look up lyrics from the late 60’s through the 70’s you’d see how substantial the difference is between then and now.

I don’t have a problem with technology itself necessarily, it's merely a root of a disease that plagues us all--consumerism. Consumerism is all about brainwashing and trickery, a plague we’re thrown into from the moment we’re born. Commercials telling us our lives will not be complete without the toys they are selling. As we grow older the toys evolve and become more expensive, yet the sales method never really changes. In this world consumerism thrives because of the psychopathic CEOs dangling employees on a string like puppets; bankers on Wall Street gambling with our money only to be bailed out by politicians who prey upon our incomes through Corporate Welfare. Corporations hypnotize us into mindless drones, consuming everything they cast out on a fishing line, trapping us inside a box that we can’t escape. Our wants become our needs, a repeated cycle of consumerism as we run in place on a hamster wheel with no hopes of escaping the caged-in boundaries they laid out for us until we dissolve into grains of sand.

In this world there are creative geniuses and analytical intellects. Think of the left-brain/right-brain theory: both temperaments should be allowed to thrive in today’s society, yet as time moves forward the appreciation for the creative arts seems to be going extinct. We need a creative movement; something similar to the peace movement of the 60’s. Hunter S. Thompson defines this movement perfectly in his ‘wave’ speech from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: “Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Five years later? Six? It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era—the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run . . . but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant. . . .You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. . . . And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. . . . So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.” 

Due to us constantly having to work 24/7 just to make a living (those of us who have not had a chance yet to work for our dream career that is) a majority of us are never able to reach our full potential in what we’re talented in, especially those who live in the lower middle-class and in poverty. This is perhaps the main reason why the rich stay rich and the poor stay poor. Just look at the astonishingly high prices of tuition from art schools. At the wage creative artists are paid today, you’ll likely be dead before you ever pay off your college debt.

Now to the second half of my poem, where being marooned on an island becomes a theme. This section is not from my perspective primarily, it’s an exploration of consciousness expansion and the underlying risks that can come with it. The person supposed to be speaking on this section of the poem is a girl I once knew, who lost herself after reaching for the secret too soon like Syd Barrett did. She was a highly creative genius who was searching for her own purpose in life through consciousness expansion.

Psychedelics were the tool she used to set sail on her journey for the truth, and at first they seemed to work perfectly as they unlocked a creative power that appeared so compelling from my observation. The poems she began writing were like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Her words had such buoyancy, a dexterous skill that evolved throughout her enlightenment. She was surfing the peak of a soaring creative wave until it crashed against a Cliffside sending her over the edge into the depths of insanity. Her third eye no longer shined soon enough; a bonfire that burned itself out too soon. The haunting visions she began having soon became permanent, and she isolated herself from society after falling victim to schizophrenia like Syd Barrett did. There’s no way of explaining the difficulty I have writing this, because even now, four years later, I’m still haunted by the fact that I could have saved her. She is perhaps the underlying reason why I began writing in the first place; her dream seemed to morph into mine somehow. She inspired me to write an award-winning poem entirely dedicated to her after all, which is now published in the 2016 Student Edition of The Red Wheelbarrow at De Anza College. Perhaps I will share it with Odyssey in another article later on.