Verisimilitude
I can’t sleep at night.
My thoughts are going in slow motion down
the cluttered highway of that crowded city.
The lights are shining dimly and
the billboards are faded-
once white teeth are now peeling and yellow
where birds perch singing sharply for lovers
where people throw old fruit and dirty socks,
laughing in the distance where I can’t hear it.
And laughing yet louder when I can.
The echoes are flat and lazy and I fear that they will
sleep before I can,
And my last conscious thought will be of the
flickering parlor lights in my living room
that I was supposed to change last week,
but didn’t because I was tired.
didn’t because I was entranced by the big city
that just couldn’t escape my closed eyes.
My dreams come in spurts of danger and death
that just chase me farther along my imaginative racetrack
of impossibility
that… doesn’t even exist
As much as I try to run towards the falsehood
that my ambition implies I know that I will run forever,
the bright lights of self- created metropolis staining my retinas,
burning sharply into my dry mouth and sliding roughly
between my fingers and toes.
It rips away all of the vocal chords that I had so recently
learned to manipulate into exactly what
everyone wanted to hear.
And so now, I struggle to grasp the almost universal
concept of slumber.
My eyes-
once wide and innocently radiating lagoon light
are now exposed to only the insides of my
night envisioned eyelids,
where I can only look at that haunting hamartia that
was mythical from the instance that it arrived out of
the dust lying on that back alley of my city
that was the only dream I ever did have.
And so, lying in old batman sheets and
hugging a ragged teddy bear
I found at the bottom of my ten-year-old toy chest
I open my eyes.
The light of reality is worse than of an urbanized
ten-acre plot I could ever conceive.
It dissects my poor vision until the room stops spinning
and the dots on the ceiling are focused.
It pulls from every corner of my room a new implement of destruction
and while my eyes are open I watch the worries
that took years to invent with them shut collapse
Bulldozers made of math assignments and old chewing gum
take down the incredible edifices that were designed to be
infallible structures of hope and beauty.
Ripping apart bricks from cement,
peeling paint off of dry wall and wooden desks
picking up old dishes of Chinese food and deciding without
a second thought to throw them out of the windows that
were removed ten minutes ago.
I blink
and for that sweet second that the room is dark I fall down
and finally… finally…
I drift into a long overdue…
period of light…
with my eyes staring straight at the ceiling,
struggling to put the dots in the right order.
My thoughts are going in slow motion down
the cluttered highway of that crowded city.
The lights are shining dimly and
the billboards are faded-
once white teeth are now peeling and yellow
where birds perch singing sharply for lovers
where people throw old fruit and dirty socks,
laughing in the distance where I can’t hear it.
And laughing yet louder when I can.
The echoes are flat and lazy and I fear that they will
sleep before I can,
And my last conscious thought will be of the
flickering parlor lights in my living room
that I was supposed to change last week,
but didn’t because I was tired.
didn’t because I was entranced by the big city
that just couldn’t escape my closed eyes.
My dreams come in spurts of danger and death
that just chase me farther along my imaginative racetrack
of impossibility
that… doesn’t even exist
As much as I try to run towards the falsehood
that my ambition implies I know that I will run forever,
the bright lights of self- created metropolis staining my retinas,
burning sharply into my dry mouth and sliding roughly
between my fingers and toes.
It rips away all of the vocal chords that I had so recently
learned to manipulate into exactly what
everyone wanted to hear.
And so now, I struggle to grasp the almost universal
concept of slumber.
My eyes-
once wide and innocently radiating lagoon light
are now exposed to only the insides of my
night envisioned eyelids,
where I can only look at that haunting hamartia that
was mythical from the instance that it arrived out of
the dust lying on that back alley of my city
that was the only dream I ever did have.
And so, lying in old batman sheets and
hugging a ragged teddy bear
I found at the bottom of my ten-year-old toy chest
I open my eyes.
The light of reality is worse than of an urbanized
ten-acre plot I could ever conceive.
It dissects my poor vision until the room stops spinning
and the dots on the ceiling are focused.
It pulls from every corner of my room a new implement of destruction
and while my eyes are open I watch the worries
that took years to invent with them shut collapse
Bulldozers made of math assignments and old chewing gum
take down the incredible edifices that were designed to be
infallible structures of hope and beauty.
Ripping apart bricks from cement,
peeling paint off of dry wall and wooden desks
picking up old dishes of Chinese food and deciding without
a second thought to throw them out of the windows that
were removed ten minutes ago.
I blink
and for that sweet second that the room is dark I fall down
and finally… finally…
I drift into a long overdue…
period of light…
with my eyes staring straight at the ceiling,
struggling to put the dots in the right order.