Mosaics Of Meaning

Life is a scattering of broken tiles,

some aligning by chance into mosaics

and you talk yourself into thinking there’s design.

You spend your days chasing new definitions,

holding on until they dissolve at your touch,

and then you find one more, and one more.

Once you’ve scraped every word from dictionaries like paint off prison walls,

once your legs ache from running on treadmills of smoke and mirrors,

chasing truths that vanish as you near them,

you whisper to the void,

hoping death will hand you meaning;

as if eternity hands out closure like candy at childhood fairs,

Ferris wheels spinning cheap adrenaline for the gullible.

Truth be told, meaning is the last standing word,

and you’ve clung to it like a ridge over an abyss,

because letting go would make you crumble to dust.

Meaninglessness demands humility, and we, proud morons, have none.

Once you're dead, your vanity dies unread;

meaning or no meaning, the world shrugs and you shrink, dots erased into oblivion: inconspicuous, futile, endlessly pointless.