Interior Design

Why have an inner world and outside?
What could the purpose for it be?
It’s like we live two lives in tandem,
One that we feel, one that “they” see.
I’ve always wondered if the others
pondered one thing,  then did another.
Perhaps a child, still, on the inside,
while on the outside now a mother.

What arbitrator of our actions
decides which part of us is winning––
that Eden waiting on the inside
that holds such pleasures bent on sinning,
or the prison of our reason
that most often wins the fight
so that the things that we might dream of
are shoved back farther from the light.

Dark possibility within us,
hanging dormant from its rafter,
is catered to in films and stand-up
that use strange fruit to prompt our laughter.
What pot within us stirring,
dark foam straining to be free
imbues this cruelty and violence
with such popularity?

I don’t pretend to know the answer
of why these opposites must be
but they are principles as constant
as orbit, mass or gravity.
The world reflects that microcosm
of ions, electrons or quarks.
Turning particles of matter
into kisses, hugs and barks.

But also rifle barrels, gun powder,
coiled ropes and barbed wire walls;
for the same force that made our trampolines
and hula hoops and baby dolls,
also made the submachine guns
that spread their tales to you and me
as clearly as the gentle stories
told to us at mother’s knee.

Interior’s a cryptic language
with words as symbols and as visions.
Light lives there as well as darkness
and both alter our decisions.
A drama that is lived within us
as mesmerizing as any tome,
and the places that they take us
can lead to chaos or to home.

The prompt word today is “interior.”