the forest, the trees, the stars, the sky..!

we talked about the balance at dinner last night. 

the best music, the best art, the best anything: 

both. big picture compelling. 

beautiful even when it’s being played 

from shitty iPhone speakers. 

but if you’re going to fixate - if you’re going 

to listen to that shit 1227 times - enough details 

on them trees, easter eggs that melt in your mouth, 

so many little fixtures in those singular summer leaves 

that took half a tab for me to see but once 

it wore off they were still there… to leave you tireless. 

always more to understand, always more 

to move the human in you. more to catalyze. 

an infinity of triggers if you’re going to spend the time 

to find them.

the things i have heard these last few weeks 

were rarely for the first time, but they might 

as well have been. as if i’d set myself up 

with 21 years of art so that i could discover 

it all now. pre-empting my own take off. 

did i hear before? did i sing before? 

did i speak before? did i breathe before? 

i can’t imagine how. only that it wasn’t like this, 

that chemicals isolating pyres of my spirit gave me 

an idea of what it might be like if i could become 

more than myself for a second but 

that was the closest i came to 300%. 

not like this. not like this. never like 

this most hands rife through straw in search 

of needles for lifetimes but not us. no, 

with the sand seeping into our souls 

past the hourglass ticks we just burnt the damn 

haystack whole, melted each needle into our skin 

with the threads attached. 

i’d never been barred from the forest but now? 

now… now i saw trees. now i can see.

i thought it was lovely to walk amongst nature. 

and it was. but to fly? 

god never let me put my soul and my soles 

back upon that bound floor. 

keep me up here where i can see it all, 

any way i like, one vine at a time or the whole 

vast jungle. 

let my tears be raindrops atop the hellish paradise 

of life. grant me the strength to stay aloft long enough 

to tell the story of the beautiful despair 

that i am helpless to deny. 

give me the voice with which to raise the song 

that warns the people to always watch for comets 

because the day we vanish from reality 

it must be known to the cold vast universe 

that humanity existed at a time during 

which even stars could fall to the earth