IT Is All A Dream, Right?
I was told with age, comes wisdom, and clarity. Every morning I rise 6 foot something inches towards heavens blue dome. Patiently I’ve progressed only finding myself more confused, more questions than answers “Why me?” “What if?” “Does It mean anything? Death is coming for me regardless of what I’ve been, what does being good matter?”
“Why try?” Ill with life I pick up a new bottle, tracing my thumb around the rim of the glass in my other hand, staring at my fingertips. They think the crowd will save them and is safer than the silence, they think they’re all different, stale with the same fluctuations, they think they can drown out the noise with more noise, deafening the lost intelligence within, bathing in nullity and nonsense. More fools elevated by more fools, inspiring a generation to be foolish in order to climb the ranks, the planning was fool-proof. I’d be with them if I had my flask.
Being young I thought I could change it.
Now I hope to survive it.
While the older ones think they can avoid it.
The ever pervasive It.
Spreading its influence
with its soul chilling terror.
Turning the most tenderly loved
slaves to its control.
My only images of her fail to express her current sentiments,
her eyes too much for words
Now dimmed,
by thirst
and finding no fill.
“When’s the last time you played your guitar?” I asked.
She didn’t reply, a few days later she sent me a piece explaining her loss of desire to be a performing artist.
It seemed to find her too.
Being young she thought she could change it, now she’s trying to survive it.
“I’m learning to be a professional
now,
which is far less heartbreaking
than being loved.”
One more
Line descended,
Each word hunting down the past, eroding the images of the diamond eyed
star child with dark locks
littered with silver and jewelry, glittering here and there.
Images drift across the plains of unremembered skies and snows in my mind, settling on images of elation: you playing your simple sweet guitar, humbled by the infectious harmony of your voice. Although annoying at times, it was yours, filling every wall with your bright presence. What is more delightful than seeing the ones you love do what they love, effortlessly engulfed in passion? That passion now a moonbeam behind the shadow of a cloud. I guess It found you. Grief now flowing from where soft lyrics fell like petals of a magical rose.
it’s easier when you’re young,
when the feet are light,
before earth becomes to heavy,
or we become too heavy in it.
“What is worse than being buried alive, is watching people watch. It kills your desire to resist. It’s like everyone supporting my prison sentence as if I have committed a crime by not being independent.” She summed up the world in three sentences
Being young I thought I could change It. Growing older I try to understand and overcome it, “charm the past with promises of the future, feed what fuels everything you value” echoes in my minds chamber but I stumble in my error, in my steps of the present. What is done cannot be undone.
Success doesn’t offset atonement neither does punishment. Forgiveness does not extinguish.
“What is worse than being buried alive, is watching people watch. It kills your desire to resist. It’s like everyone’s supporting my prison sentence as if I have committed a crime by not being independent.” I kept rereading, rewatching, supporting her prison sentence
with each word read.
Everyone knows what will lead him to hell, but nobody wants to go to hell.
So
Brick
By
Brick
We build our own inferno,
Gradually,
First a wall
then a room
Until It‘s all around us
blocking both our light
and the way.
It‘s the same everywhere, driven by great things man wishes to fly but can’t cope with the nausea nor the heights.
I thought I could change it, and extinguish the world and be back in time for Letterman, well Colbert now, Trevor Noah’s not bad either.
Being older I finally understood it, and his dream, making his departure harder to bare. He gets mad when we cry in his remembrance, the message was a joke, a grand irony, an oxymoron. We were dreaming, he was awake, and they put him to back to bed before he could force us out of our slumber.
The only advice I can give: is that you learn to dance on fire and not be frightened for more women were sent to the stake than men. Don’t forget the joy that comes from a pause, a ponder, from nothing. Learn to endure and move forward and not starve possibility and potential with current circumstance.
Lastly,
you’re not alone,
mine is here
with me now
as I finish this glass.
Sometimes I think he’s gone,
then he returns,
usually at night,
a bird no one wants,
a bird they try to crush,
a bird they try to sedate
my bird of pain,
he sings,
sometimes,
with enough fire to unthaw frozen tears.
He rests in the shadow of my soul,
the spark
Too pure, too celestial
So sad and beautiful.
If he touched the world
It would burn
to ashes
as everything soon will,
regardless of age
Sex
Merit
and rank.
It will be the first true act
Of equality…
I dream of the day
But It‘s all a dream, right?
—Jahbari Willis
Deep, beautifully touching though a trifle sad.
Elegantly arranged.