Do you not know when, why, or what place?
There's no thought process--of course not. It's a "thanks, have a nice day" mentality, a "Hey, how are you?"
A rolling-off-the-tongue automatic question and answer, no ifs, ands, or buts.
Everything is memorized, it seems.
It's a muttering, sputtering, dazed cloud of really nothing and everything at all
It's the things you notice and the things you don't
The things you've long forgotten, and the things you know you won't,
The forgetting gets old, while the remembering gets painful
And the happiest moments are replayed in your mind
Like a movie reel, with your life as the main feature,
And you watch a caricature of yourself walking down the street
Doing nothing at all, but isn't it significant?
And you're laughing and crying and loving every second of living life
So full of life
An utterly lifeless life
But so full of good intention and looking forward to the future
Reminiscent of the past so that the present seems boring
But oh, those little moments!
When you're most unaware, they creep up on you and pull you out of despair
The despair of your arbitrary existence
As you wait for some excitement. You make your own, you see,
That's what you're for.
Oh, little one, stop and smell the flowers please
There is so much more out there if you take the time to see.
Don't just see it, really look.
Pause for a brief moment, and catch up with yourself.
Don't let life spin around you as you stand motionless.
You feel life in every fiber of your being, but--yet--you stand in an indifferent vacuum of time, motionless.
Here is your LIFE: look at it.
It exists all around you.
It's a face and a place and it's something you touch
It's the smell in the air, it's everything and nothing, it's much
Of the same thing over and over again until you're sick of it all
But you're a creature of consistency, you see?
So STOP.
Look around.
It's insistent, this hypnotic splendor.
It coaxes you into its trance as
The crooning lull of life sings your name;
And you can't help but wonder
As you keep on going under
If it is everything you thought it would be.
And you're drowning, you see, in life itself
An apocalyptic moment, paused, just for you.
You watch it go by
Childhood into adulthood
Memory by memory
Tied neatly in a bow, your own play by play.
Look--quick--before it changes.
Look--quick--and take it in.
Don't let it pass you by
You can learn how to fly
If you want to.
Seconds drag on into minutes, then hours
With each passing day
We speed through the weeks, the months, the years.
And when we get the chance to come up to bat
And make our name renowned
We feel horrifyingly alone in the bright, white lights.
And one solitary voice is heard above the endless chatter:
"Swing, batter, batter, batter"
before it's too late.
xoxo e
