It’s not a death, facing each day is breath and strength and captive attention to the slow creep of hours while assigned to responsibilities that perch like stone gargoyles on brittle shoulders. Weight is a rule, a crushing pressure extremities beg to remove, their tremble constant, surrounding an uncoiled stomach unable to settle under the caustic Hells dragging it through shades of purple pain, a blur of bruised color that tastes green as it climbs back up the throat and burns soft flesh, filling the nose with rotten fermented apple.
Such is the taste of each turn of the Earth, the awakening of the sun’s gift to frenzied lists through which the active must stumble, dutifully checking off routine obligations and carrying on a melody with tone deaf key, grimaces surrounding, hands clasped to ears, gasps of disdain as common as sighs of displeasure.
Proceeding on the cracked stucco of youth’s promise, steps uncertain, direction unsound, defeat imminent regardless of decision because there’s no choice; the river continues to bend and flow the same as it has to and there’s no new way to paddle and remain afloat. Drown and reach merciful ends. Swim against the current and flail until limbs grow heavy as if filled with wet sand, rocky beds inviting sweet slumber. Step from the water and deter all progress, watching the life known drift quickly from sight, a dream’s umbilical severed and the severity of which will only grow apparent upon the gangrenous decay of flesh, blood, bones, spirit and discipline.
A landslide of drunken promise crushes naysayers standing shakily on eroding shores. Join them, and their parabolic world of uncompromising freedom. Shake fists at order, burning rules as if tissue paper dangling over raging hearths, disappearing in brilliant flashes of vitriolic righteousness about how this fight should close, how every punch is a sacred gesture guided by the fluid truth of their fervent belief.
Embrace nothing. Endorse no one. Combine only with air and Earth, fleeting births into decadence reversed to excusable forays of understanding. Rewrite codes – structured programming signaling rights and wrongs as white zeroes and black ones – with perfect grays both enormously complex and lyrically simple. For sinking into the distance between light and darkness evades all striving, care, goals, threats, dominance, and greed for means to any end but existing in these moments outside the blank hurry.
Festering passions interfere in swift waters, weighing as stones in pockets, cracking dreams with dead knocking muted under the frothing surface. Staying light and floating amicably just requires letting go of heavy hopes, a life adrift in the sweep of comforting predictability.