This poem was by request: Jarred wanted a poem where everything rhymed in -ology. I compromised and did every other line. A suggestion for the reader; read it out loud, it may flow better. Or read it on the page, if you prefer.

Phenomenology; Or, The Meaning of Life

for Jarred

I'll study anything that ends in -ology

I say to you, with hints of worn frustration,

if it explains (but with no false apology)

the purpose that we crave with desperation.

You look at me, confused, as though mythology

more than the words I give, makes sense to seek.

But daily life is closer to theology,

as every breath is closer to mystique.

As in earthquakes, the grip of such seismology

seizes the richter scale of each experience

and leaves us now to reach for blank cartography,

charting meaning 'til we are granted sense.

Lost in the mists of ancient ideology,

we feel our journey aching for release

through any framing form of etiology,

although no cause, or reason, brings us peace.

We live within neurotics of neurology

and trap ourselves within our own constraints

along with haunting cries of phantomology,

unable to afford themselves restraint.

Awake at night, no help from pharmacology,

we shudder at the sounds of crippling fears,

but then alight in day to ornithology

that sings melodious grace into our ears.

I think you have created angelology,

because you need angelic-lined defense

or some invented kind of teleology,

an end or purpose steeped in recompense.

The ancient Greeks found reason in astrology

as if the stars were formed in strict design,

that then drench heavens with a cardiology

straight from the core of what could seem divine.

If answers born from any etymology,

or definition, give us actuality

that we may miss by searching in biology,

I may be tempted to redefine reality.

Past culture, past our inner anthropology,

we look for answers; where should we begin?:

In landscapes of the personal topography?

How bodies reach for hearts outside their skin?

Indeed, life seems more tender than chaology;

a semblance of an order, more than just

the chaos we prescribe to sociology.

We're lucky when we live for those we trust.

It's not a complex figure of cosmology,

No complications bigger than our hands

Entwined. It all returns to love and more psychology

Of whatever we can use to understand.

In the end, no matter what the -ology

we choose, or where we plant our feet;

we sketch this, love, discrete phenomenology,

to help us make our world seem more complete.

"The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent. But if we can come to terms with this indifference, then our existence as a species can have genuine meaning. However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light." - Stanley Kubrick