As I sit
statuesque on an express train, a funereal procession of my childhood, decaying and no longer the rich, deep foliage it once was, flickers by. It exists in a separate dimension, an altogether different plane of space and time, where action figures and candies hold a certain majestic and nostalgic quality. It is a retrograde pick-up truck parked stoically beneath the teal bleachers of a stadium; obsolete, its potent fumes of exhaust mingle with the plastic-looking clouds. It’s a crumbling billboard sign, advertising the flag of a country which exists only in human memory, its anthem being ricocheted off the stony, decrepit walls. It is the rippled reflection in a mud-ridden pond, distorted and moribund. It’s a craggy vertical collection of used broken cars, done in, dejected, peeling. It’s a secret grey bridge, locked forever in a forest, sporadically sat upon by picnickers and then promptly forgotten. A recurrent snapping turtle, garbage-bagged and disposed of time and time again in an infinite reservoir. An industrial village of sawdust and bottle caps, faded red bricks and graveyards passing like film behind the salt-speckled window. A white house goes by, and I can breathe again.
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I’ll be your moonshine if you give me sanity,
Suck me dry to obliterate that vanity That turns into liquid. I’ll pour me down Your throat; you’ll drunkenly dismantle my crown. Slur your words til they’re useful, teach me to think Before actions and battles push you to the brink Of the bottle. Deny me attention I’m after; I’ll steep you in tinctures of fancy hereafter. Once we’re stripped of our vices, naked and cold, And the bell delivers a backward toll And our souls can balance the take and the give, We may remember once more how to live. To find the right words without being absurd or obtuse or abstract;
To make an impact without over-embellishing, painting and relishing in metaphors dripping with gripping descriptions. To ditch the pedantic, romantic, emotional crap; to honestly take a step back and revalue the value of meaning and matter, erase ostentatious expression and chatter. To utter it verbally leaving hyperbole out; to write about rather than flout my particular, existentialist woes. To reach out and grab, through poem or prose, the nit and the grit and the lickety split of humankind's mind before we combust. To finally find (as a bard often must), The purpose behind this quintessence of dust. Sleeplessness is my affliction,
Symptoms including sibilance, reluctance, conscience, And a particular dissonance acutely heard midst the Herds of exhales and squeaks, Creaks and Meek sighs, Polka dot Eyes perceiving opaque shadows, which Grow and Weave Through cracks on the ceiling. I can smell the paint chips Peeling, daintily they fall Through air, on Their way they spell red Zeds, zigzagging Draggingly to the floor. What’s more, The air turns cold as my Old, Fair hands, purple-painted, spasm in reaction to Chasms of white; my fingers Linger long enough to Snuff out the oblong space no longer void of any trace of the human race. Before my mind can pace the realm of the blind each line must be weighed down with faded nouns, no egg whites right of the margin can I keep, and then I may sleep. |
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