The air around me is mute, as if clicked off by remote
The shouting along to songs we had grown to
Not an occasion to simply hum the notes
As bright as the chandeliers and bulbs were strewn
The atmosphere outside is as if the television were switched off
For a time it felt as if I found my element
But I stepped away to a silence as loud as Kalashnikov
fire
I’m wired
I didn’t want the party to end
Everybody was so happy.
You’re starting the next chapter of your lives
I hate to get sappy
But growing up has been more about feeling alone than alive
— — — — —
Isolation is one hell of a medication
The pill to pop to take you to a matrix of your own invention
Paint a pretty picture, be everyone’s cheerleader
A self-drawn caricature, an auto-scripted character
The plot’s a jailhouse tragedy and I can’t wait to self-administer
If you lock the door yourself,
it doesn’t feel
so
much
like
prison.
— — — — —
I still look up at the sky, hoping to see the cheese wheel that is the moon,
behind the obscene LEDs that expose the parking lot, and offend the stars,
Is a sky that looks like nothing, and it doesn’t seem to be bringing any news…
A dark, empty farce –
Light exists behind it more than we could ever measure
But the brightness of “now” keeps it hidden
A strange reminder
That looking straight into the light can really hide the night’s shimmer.
— — — — —
Have you ever seen the clouds in the night sky?
It almost feels as it it’s coming from your mind’s eye
The open expanse of black bleeding into your periphery
The hard, forgiving earth beneath you,
A strange paternal quality about acknowledging reality
Knowing you know no better and allowing you to shift,
Onto something real from your path on dream clouds,
Though it isn’t exactly comfortable
Everything pulling you back down to the ground is truth
But that floating puff of smoke pokes at an internal query
Would it all still feel out of reach if I was up there?
And for a second you forget every feeling you’re feeling and every feeling you’ve ever felt and every feeling you’ll ever feel and you just wonder if
the clouds feel
soft and misty
or as airy as free fall
— — — — —
I guess I wondered much about why those wisps of water-smoke look like peace –
Do they exist where I wish I was? Did they solve the problem of gravity?
Do I wish my spirit untethered? Did it get too hard to stand here alone, graduating slowly into the depths of the world’s embrace?
Really I guess the question is:
Is death more like flying? Or is living more like falling?
