Faded Snapshots

White-framed snapshots tell the tale...
frozen in time, the wise mind.
Been like this so long.
One day we'll have USB ports in the back of our heads.
We'll plug into each other. You will see what I see.
I will see what you see. I will feel what you feel.
For me, the Matrix got smashed...
It's been four years now.
The glittering confetti of all my illusions
cascading down like fractured shards of brightly colored glass.
Reboot, the past is moot.
Now I sift through it like an anthropologist.
I try to discern this from that. I try to reckon the course. I try to divine the path.
I dust off puzzle pieces and fit them together.
I attempt to make myself whole.
Dreams and delusions, conversations and mystery...
cracked wide, the yawning divide,
the chasm that separates fallacy and reality.
Trees I climbed as a boy. Women I fucked.
Classrooms in schoolhouses. Parking lots in the night.
Oceans and tides, Barren mountain tops, lush valleys...
my breath, my breath...
The eyes of my friends, the voices of my family...
An orchestral display that is holy in the mind's sacred eye.
Avenues lit dimly by a fading sunset in the summer of my youth.
Aspen snowfalls, Marijuana meditation spanning
the continental divide. I try, I try...
My thoughts become still, my body grows heavy with age...
These scenes race past, flip forth, no chronology, only my mythology.
The solitude of my addiction...liquor dripping down my scrawny chest,
a cocaine-numbed mind stalking the dark caverns of my soul.
If you haven't been there...if you haven't glimpsed your spirit rising,
straining to take flight from this world...
My words are madness, my thoughts insane.
Most assuredly, I say unto thee...
I am not mad. I am not insane. Not anymore.
White-edged snapshots, They fade in time,
They crack and splinter...give way to dust.
Each smile and tear exists...
but only in the treasure chest of my memory.

April 29, 2008