When the music stops

When the music stops,
we will find our chairs.
I hope your chair is not taken.
We enjoyed the dancing,
the songs sound good in a good mood
don’t you find?
A wholesome high washes through us,
no spirits or fumes required.
Soak it in, that feeling of hope,
for hope is fuel for the hardships ahead.
Reality is never quite
what the pomp proclaims.

Vapid motivation

‘Don’t worry’
reads the meme
well, ok then …
I’ll hang worry
on a hook
like an old coat
I’ll discard it
I’ll feel lighter
I’ll read a book
as if worry were
a skin to peel away
as if worry were a choice
damn that imbecilic meme
stating ‘Smile and don’t worry’
advice from good hearted
vacuous fools.

From within

The cafe bubbled effervescently in that afternoon, a family celebrated a wonderful morning. Jim sat holding a champagne flute, watching joy unfurl as sound. It was hard to capture the gist of individual conversations, as they competed with one-another. Just the odd exclamation promptly drowned out with laughter. He looked through the flute, to watch how the tiles and the table legs warp, but he saw nothing through the dirty glass. He was conscious not to look bored, but has numbed in whatever neutral contented face he was going for. Jim wonders if he is possibly looking comatose or inane. He cannot see his reflection in the glass.
The other two at his table looked out at the celebration. One looked like she was doing the same as him, hanging on to an expression that looked something like contentment, perhaps she is contented. The other made eye contact with a man across the room, he held his glass up, in cheers, then drained it and let out a sigh that evaporated swiftly into chatter. Jim wonders to say something, but the small talk is done and all else seems to elude him at this time. His chair is numbing his seat.
As he retreats inwards, he watches his limbs, he becomes very aware of their presence, he wonders how to place them ordinarily. Jim drifts away, his eyes focus on nothing in particular. A question draws him out from the fog. The crispness of reality starts his heart. “How do you know the bride?” She asks, standing over the table, nursing an empty flute. Jim’s eyes regain focus as he pans up along her blue dress. He met her attentive blue eyes “I work with Mike.” He says. Mike is the only one here he knows. He met his fiancé just once. Mike had forgotten his case. This short reply takes the sparkle from her eyes, she offers a brief “Nice to meet you,” and moves along. Jim sinks back into the fog.

And another thing.

I approach the towering barricade, impenetrable it looms over me, the gruesome gatekeeper asks me three questions, “Do you have your post slip . . . Do you have some identification . . . Would you like some stamps today . . . “. I decline stamps and hand her the parchments, reluctantly the gatekeeper hands me my package. The item is wieldy, I cradle it closely, protectively, as I would my own new born son and turn to continue my quest,. Out there, there in the merciless land, the frigid gale burns my flesh, I lean into it’s obstinate wall of spite, seemingly forever. Accusatory eyes pore over me, I must not meet any of them, or face the lashes of judgment. My shelter, my castle, my flat, could not come into sight soon enough. In what seems like days the welcoming beacon of my objective arrives, pure ambrosia in a pool of the devil’s muck. I push my key into the latch and turn, I hear the churn of engineering unfasten the keep. At last, safety. The package is tightly wrapped, it repels my groping fingers, rejects my prying nails. I reach into my weapon store and retrieve my blade, remove it from it’s scabbard and hold it aloft, it glints and shines with pure purpose, swiftly it slices betwixt the packing tape, liberating my book on bonsai gardening.

 

Mood is so fragile and transitory, mine and the worlds, I feel what resides in the ether. I argue over the mood of the world, tell of her anguish and her warnings, of what they cannot see and what has yet to be. As the earth retains the same settled superficial surface to numb souls, they see what they will always see, they see a future of a world of their opportunity.

 

My silence is not a sign of your winning the argument, it is merely dismay that you believe there to be another side in this view. Sometimes your view is so perverse and crooked, it is unarguable. There is so little sign of an anchor of rationality in your view, it is impossible to talk you back to sanity.

Choose care

The illusion of free will is the keystone to the trick.

All the engines have stopped and all the tweeting beaks have gone to their nest. The neighbours have put down their hammers and the apes are all howled out. I put my head to the pillow to pretend that there is silence. The once mute swan feathers creak with every tiny twitch of my skull. What sounds like a rhythmical tin tray band, plays with every pulse in my ear way. My heart beats my ribs against the mattress, reverberating through it’s springs. My guts churn and creak like much haunted plumbing. I wonder how I ever sleep over my own cacophony.

Reviewing my feelings. A dip in mood, not really, emotional? Perhaps. Explaining would make me cry out there walking. I see your care, it hits me every time, as I see the man in need, the other side, the side where there is nothing given, but the kindness of beautiful people like you. Such sadness meets such kindness.

Nature and nurture battle it out. How much does what we experience change us? How much is in-built, our birth code reacting to what we have to deal with. When I saw injustice, all my life I have been appalled, yet stayed clear in fear. I was painfully shy, the unknown and the scary, never enough inquisitiveness to overcome my cowardly soul. I am told I am different now, yet I feel it is just experience gauged against my rules. Edging into virtual friendship has given me experience. The fact that there are wonderful people in the world, ‘them’ are a figment of a paranoid and fearful mind. I am part of us. Though don’t bother inviting me to a party.

Pessimism laughs at optimism’s happily ever after.

The jock basks in the violence of the sound
Ignorant to the content of the lyrics
dancing to the wishes of his demise.