Survival?

That sensation of fear and dread
turning flesh from rose to deathly grey,
The colours reflecting our feelings
as the colours that turn night into day.

When flesh is rose, the heart beats
with fullness and passion, a dance of joy.
On turning ashen, the heart slows
as if it were dying, a battered old toy

Tossed and hurled to oblivion.
Then Life gives way to merest existence,
Bled of the beauty and majesty
Destroying all quality and leaving subsistence.

Inside is hollow, echoes of thoughts
and feelings reverberate, insubstantial.
Sunlight reflected, the form not the real,
light without Life, devoid of potential.

Lacking a centre but craving its base,
this wasteland we travel, endlessly seeking,
all sustenance burnt up, dried and decayed,
footfall now heavy, stride is decreasing.

Instinct rises, suppressing desire
to be free of the numbness of paralysed spirit,
Not evolved far enough to loosen its grasp
on meaningless drudgery, we are trapped in it

Just like all animals. Why then develop
the gift to see the Universe, glimpsing its splendour,
Yet yielding all will to continue with this
when Life's heart is ripped out? We cease to be tender

Towards living things, become brutal and harsh.
Survival, the minimum we must expect,
Becomes our glass coffin, repository of death,
yet from its bare comfort we cannot eject.

Can we progress past mundanity,
Evolve past this mindless insanity,
Of clinging to life purely physical,
Blocking our path to the siritual?