We Used To Be Alive

The wagons circle, unaware of what they really are surrounding. The camp is quiet tonight. No laughter. No singing. No fabricated stories of trashy whores, or vulnerable maidens. It's all the same anyway. Just stillness, as if it were expected. As if it were supposed to be. As if we all had been rejected for our point of view, for our flannel dispositions, our perverse personalities, our social pathologies, and our lies. Solitude breeds solitude for some. Or sorrow. Sometimes both. For others it brings relief.

All the solitary campfires, burning low, and dying out alone. Sounds like a song I once wrote. We sleep in one's, and begin our day in two's, in the morning, but only in the mirror. We wash our face of last nights lingering news. We feel a brief connection in the glass, but only for a moment, then it too reflects a chronic sadness, projecting an undefined, but familiar, grief.

This too will eventually pass.
And it does.
But an aching, nauseous, awareness sets in that nothing's really changed but the time of day. Only from p.m. to a.m. again. Only from then to now. Lingering impressions flood a vulnerable soul. Like a dam in heaven breaking wide open, or a buff tsunami racing fast across the earth. Noah must know what I’m talking about. Talk about floods? And talk about feelings? I would imagine he must have had a few of those himself.

We drag our baggage through customs after disembarking from the boat. We bring a pair of tigers with us for protection. We pass unmolested, as expected. We carry unknown promises in body cavities they decline to search. Besides, no one has enough authority to confiscate the contraband.

And it wouldn’t do them any good.

We used to be alive. Only yesterday we were feeling confident and indulgent of the life around us. Today that same life clouds our ability to reason. It challenges our agility, as it has scoffed at our optimism. It all breaks down around us when it gets around to breaking down. Turn off the television before it cuts our bloated jugular, and leaves us gasping for the air we used to breathe.

Hope doesn't give much notice, or turn to offer some pretentious resignation upon it's departure. It just walks quietly through the door with a furtive glance and is gone.
Sounds like a poem I once wrote.