“Filler”

I saw the fall of feelings, fell
through silence, absence, beauty, death
and knew, each empty, shivering glimpse,
each second suspended in soulless eclipse,
that this was no victorious descent.

I witnessed the void, vague and lost,
saw dreams pass through my eyes
vivid in death as in sleep
reached out to strands stretched far too thin
stained by hope
defaced by reality
left dangling in the abyss
a drop of water in an endless sea
that tried to take the sky from me.

A minute lost in lust is love
when nothing else exists
when masterful arrays of atrocities commit themselves
writhing in pain and silence
without communication
radio silence, static death,
served up by headless faces
grinning back to match the mirror
fooling their reflections into smiling in return.

Usher’s house had fallen far before
I ever saw.  I blink
to miss the primal scenes
of sin, conceived covertly,
covered up by shame and guile.

I cannot understand this path
of understanding, not while blind,
as I cannot see my words. In thought
and dream, ambition, Homer gently guides my gaze.

Spitting instruction without intention
sans allure, even truth,
I see the meaning; to exist
is to wax philosophical,
empty, pointless, dull,
to weave words as threads
in an artistic quilt of nothingness
to cover my head in the dark;
to exist is to struggle for meaning
swimming in an avalanche of snow
and ignorance, knowing not which way is up;
to exist is to believe in something
so that I don’t have to acknowledge
how empty it really is;
to exist is to occupy one state
between nothingness
and oblivion
emerging mind within a body
and hoping that there’s more;
to exist is to entertain
until the show ends
or a better act comes on;
to exist is to look out over a great stage
and to realize
life is just that, an act:
a filler.