Convoluted, Swiftly Jotted Thoughts on a Rainy Day.

Disclaimer: By no means are either of these short paragraphs a complete indicator of the whole picture of life. If they seem rather dark, I am aware that they're incomplete, a snapshot in a long string of negatives. Sometimes I just write, though. This is what came out today.


From a Glassy Overlook

We build the walls that suffocate us. We mix mortar, lay foundations, sweat and curse and damn the process...but we are master masons. We supervise, incorporate others' ideas, gesture wildly, insulate with carefully chosen black felt. We shape our casket, drive the nails, climb inside, nestle our heads onto the immovable oak chest of a coffin we're sure will protect us from all the pain. Breathing becomes a task we carefully concentrate on. Suck at the air. Slurp it in. Soon, even this ingredient of existence seems a curse. We hold our mouths shut, tightly seal the lips we moved so often. The wood seems to embrace more warmly than any human ever could. The box we built, the stones we stacked...they have burned the ladder to the escape hatch, clanged it shut. Darkness. Silence. Blue-faced in the black, we shut our eyes and yearn for death to save us from our empty prison, deafened by the cacophony of silence.
What an eloquent lie it all was, this attempt at safety. To cut off all others, live all alone, to be without needs.

A life alone is not a true life.



Windshielded

Inside the need to feel wanted. A well of want so deep I drown in it, frequently. All the past screams at the tendencies of the present. All the future extends ear plugs with an air of confident solemnity. Such persuasive speeches from both of these overqualified advisors.
Find a job elsewhere! Join the ranks of the shuffling unemployed, resumes stuffed with experience and promising possibility.
The robin is a better mentor than those raving skeptics. Hop. Hop. Hop. Snatch the worm, flit away. The robin doesn't hunt for what it can't attain, or chance its future on an especially appetizing angleworm that could cost its freedom or beating heart.
But there are dead robins in the streets.
A flicker of reddish-orange-grey, a swift collision, a sudden end. No more worms to halve, no more early mornings or impatient squawking infants. Only a black clouding, a perpetual zooming chorus playing in memorandum.
The eyes never close.