It's As If Poem by aMan Bloom

It’s as if we’re wending our way in a cave
slowly trying to get out or
leading to a place of safety and of succor.

But we’re feeling the drift of something amiss,
that we might be walking in the wrong cave.
We’ve gone too far to turn back and anyway
we know that’s somehow unlikely…

It’s as if too much of who we are or, rather, have become
is married to this cave, the wrong one.

It’s as if it’s more cool in the cave, almost too cold for comfort,
not as it was when we began our journey,
but then we were younger, and different,
and hadn’t yet adjusted to what was to come…

It’s as if it’s more warm in the cave, almost too hot for comfort,
not as we’ve been told to expect by the elders,
by those who hoard the fortunes, garner the gems,
grant us a governance and spur us on…

We can’t go back.
We’ve forgot the ways.
We’ve accumulated baggage that we don’t really need
yet cannot do without…
It’s as if a toxic baggage that slowly sickens us.

We feel at a dis-ease in this wrong cave…
And wonder if there ever was a right one?

Should we
Be in
Any cave
At all? ,
We ask.


Some say we must burst out crashing its walls -
flee its never-ending path!
Others suggest that’s folly:
to change our way would end in suffering,
if not in suffocation.

Some remind us, we are now suffering, suffocating now,
that disease and un-health amend this ease and some wealth
- of detritus and dross, impedimentia and dementia,
of baggage and garbage and blight and might…

It’s as if the cave we are in is a dead-end leading to nowhere!
Perhaps we should panic, or turn violent…

The baggage is so bulky it leaves no room for turning,
forcing us as if in flood to smash again and again
against the black wall of destiny…

It’s as if we are walking in a cave,
once entered in innocent curiosity,
naïve and hungry, lovely and fierce,
simply seeking succor and safety, and comfort and security,
prosperity, power, luxury…and love…