be live in poetry

We teach each other lessons in what it is to be ourselves and be alive.
Any meaning to life beyond that is largely moot.
To allow the universe to better understand itself?
To please some hairy thunder god or wavy cosmic muffin?
I mean, maybe. Probably neither but maybe one of those.
But even more so, it couldn’t matter less the why.
The point is that we’re here to learn from each other how to be alive.
The sick trick is that even when some of us get there
or at least even when some of us come close to that
you know, we die eventually and
transmitting these truths so that people could know them their whole lives
seems to be impossible.
The passed-down lessons get corrupted by commerce and religion
by people who went mad and believed the wrong lessons fully
by people peddling falsehoods to get paid and laid
but even then
I’m not sure we could communicate the knowledge through
anything other than long life experience
in this short life
no matter how well transcribed or how well intended.
What could have put our need for each other into our nature
whatever that could mean in the larger picture of the universe
it’s intellectual masturbation in the face of
how vital it is that we do.
That we learn lessons about ourselves from each other
like we’re all facets of the same unwieldy gem
because we are.

We teach each other through incidents and accidents
through our stupid rage and our bottomless love
in grand gestures and the accumulation of ten million little moments
we teach and we learn what it is to be alive and
because our lives are so short
because it’s so hard to transmit the lessons in full without direct experience
we keep doing it forever
or as long a forever as we are around, anyway.
And it is terrible
and it is beautiful
and it is maddening
and it is heartbreaking
and it is sublime
and it is life.

It is the meaning of life.
Any deeper exploration might be fun
but it might waste time and
it probably misses the point.
Learn, teach, on accident, on purpose.
Live.
Live when you can live.