From a lost wilderness

A slow motion movie plays.

I see myself as a child

The simplicity

Of running barefoot…

Of mud across my face.

My feet had never walked across

The lifelessness of pavement.

My hands had never run across

The truculence of metal and glass.

I was unknown yet to the world.

Did I leave behind that simplicity

Thinking that significance would taste good?

The more they see me

The less they see me

The more of a projection I become.

Whatever they need me to be

So that they can love me.

Whatever they need me to be

So that they can hate me

Instead of themselves.

No more simplicity

I have a calling

It has lured me away

from that wilderness.

It has thrust me

Into the lifelessness

And truculence

Of the world.

The churches of my tears

Scream a eulogy

A eulogy for the joy

That once belonged to the people.

They do not miss it.

Because they do not remember it.

Instead

They walk the pavement

Feeling as if something has been lost.

And the earth grows louder…

Louder to try to reach them

Through that pavement

And Metal

And Glass.

Like the voice of a mad man

Locked behind the depraved walls

Of an asylum

It is the mad man who is sane.

It is the mad man who is sane.