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Image Prison

A Poem of Sight and Substance

By Neah LekanPublished 3 years ago 1 min read
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Image Prison
Photo by Aleksander Vlad on Unsplash

Regard me only by my name,

and think not on my image.

Illusion is that which you see, and

that inside, as hidden as the heaven

where it someday shall reside.

The eye does not inform, it does invent.

To act upon invention, treating by the eye

and not the heart, is to take my captor’s role,

to reinforce my true self’s cell enclosure.

Yet who sees any by the heart? To thus

regard another is the highest vulnerability,

dispensing with the fiction called reality

and meeting on uncertain ground.

That I would have you see me so, folly may be,

for in this fiction’s realm not all can see,

nor any long sustain such sight with more

than few. And yet, I find myself audacious

here to ask, and even more to seek.

See then not with your eyes, but with your heart,

for then you may love others as yourself.

As you yourself can never see but from within,

so too see all, and me, from the interior.

Thereby we may stage our escape, from this,

our image prison. Transcend as best we can

the outward eye’s delights, and come to know

each other’s souls. For learning, love, and

life in common, require our hearts’ vision.

sad poetry
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About the Creator

Neah Lekan

Writer and student of Early Modern Literature in Southern California.

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