Our World is Blurry to the Fish

And now it's happened, we don't know why, we can't look back, we can't let go. Things we want to do now seem like a memory, a distant spot on the horizon that we cannot touch.  We can fly across the date line and admire the curve of earth, but we cannot go back. The things we used to dream about have turned into a question mark that floats between us as we sleep. We can turn off the bedside light, roll over and hug the pillow, but our nightmares will surface on the other side. 

What can I say to your naked back, that I can't say to your eyes.  In my head I've forgotten how they sparkle and burn like rebel stars on vacation from the galaxy. Your sky, my sky, three moons over the deserted island in the middle of a crystal sea. Our world is blurry to the fish. They are introduced to it as they flop around trying to free themselves from their metal-lined fish hook dungeon. The instruments of torture we use to feed our children.  

I remember nights when the earth stunk of human ignorance.  The moon tried desperately to soak up what the sun couldn't burn away. We are drowning in rivers of concrete, incarcerated in phallic towers threatening to collapse. It's hard to learn about cooperation and survival in a world were the basic instinct is kill to stay in the game. We don't look in the rearview mirror because objects are as big as they appear. 

This history, this forgotten story, this rhyme without a chorus, this struggle to repair a broken quilt that we've ripped apart with our hands, cannot happen because the sweat from our skin and blood from our mouths have made it poisonous to touch. A flesh eating virus will leave you naked to the bones, and strangers will turn away and shrug their shoulders saying you didn't have the guts. And you still don't know what you're made of. 

Soon, our life stories will be written on gravestones that kills any flower placed underneath. Our last lay will be a dare-haunt for drunken distant coeds hot for a chill. You can't follow the footsteps to here because the dirt road of our entrails will be paved over by eye-candy arsenic draped over plastic people in strip-malls. 

I was walking down the street when I saw a homeless man smiling. 

Why are you smiling? 

I am free. 

Doesn't it rain on you at night? 

Only when it rains.