Kairosclerosis ✔ [poetry]

phlegmatic

our maddening mundane best,

and our deranging depressive worst

hang not in gilded picture frames

or display behind barred glass cases

in pretentious museums

few strandlers wander in every now and then.

our dull delirious genius,

and our trite terrestrial talents

broadcast over weekly pop radio hotlists

and plaster on painted-over walls and walkways

like obsolete murals and pathways of

social movement spearheaded by fools and heroes.

we don't burn alive

with novel pain and remorse.

we fizzle, instead.

existences, white-out, like nostalgia

crawling through the cracks of an open window

at night, making the colours

a bit too bright.

believing we're celestial bodies,

ratcheting echoes of a false-hallowed body,

where our best victories,

our highest achievement

is our irregular breathing,

stirring the quiet darkness.

and our vacant head,

thrumming to the slow movement of

an invitable black hole collapsation.

the lack of noises cocooned us alive,

yet couldn't insulated us from the

reverberating frequency of cells and atoms

dissecting the fabric of our reality,

setting our skin on edge.

making us want to gut ourselves

to stop the inherent vacuum within.

we're not supernovas, exploding.

we leave no cursive smokes

nor pretty trails behind.

like scented candles and cleansing crystals

we cradle and wear on

our frittled fingers.

we're tiny fires

quivering alone in air-tight seal jars,

waiting till wax and wick of

our visions and passions,

melt and wither into a sprawling incoherent mass.

like cold-water and ice blocks,

formed on top of glittering cityscape

and shallow canals,

we sink into the cracks of bridges and apartments,

into the staccatos of revving engines and music.

into kaleidoscopic layers flattening onto us.

we learn to be better laughing stocks

for the universe

and uncover new ways to mourn

ourselves, our youth, our brilliance.

we string ourselves,

string each other along this factory line

leading to the assembly of insignificance.

we hope for an angry fix,

an ancient connection,

a god-send understanding.

hauling our untethered corpses through

teeming dusks and dawns, mornings and evenings,

yanking our disjointed body parts along

filled streets and roads, gutters and alleyways.

dragging and hiding our spasming obscure beings,

into the darkest nooks and crannies

to affirm we exist, outside

the machinery of man-made routines and natural order.

or at the very least, we're

a small crack in a glass-jar universe.

convincing ourselves to feel

the beautiful fabric of reality,

tatters and smoulders within our blind eyes.