I go through the motions.
Each step I realize a bit of what everyone has already figured out billions of times over.
Each big interval in life, each trudge up the steps.
One after the other.
Connecting, dot to dot to dot to dot.
And for what?
To finish a painting with no end.
Maybe it completes itself at the very precipice of death.
But by then what is the point of its existence.
The fleeting beauty of a singular moment at the very end when it all clicks into place.
I've seen a thousand sun sets each a different form and hue.
I'm familiar with fleeting beauty and it doesn't serve a thing.
With all life has to offer why am I left hollow and wanting.
Will this biological nightmare ever end.
The sentience of swirling sticky chemicals is trick played on us all.

The chalky Cliffs of Dover crumble in my fist.
Tucked away neatly in my pocket.
I have the power to become a person completely in control.
The tension seething in my chest no longer.
All I need is the key.
A simple motion not readily accepted by the masses.
'Tis not we who wait for the dust to settle but for the dust to settle we.
The reuptake of life hidden but always near.
We care not for the hands that pass the life from person to person.
For they could be from the grimiest of grim and still our hands are cupped for their foul crooked benevolence.
We are gods and what is purity without the soot and **** and **** to define it.
Synthetic courage and emotional restraint what more could the people want.
Only a few care for the real me, the anxiety, the truth.
Why pander the rest when I have complete control within a plastic seal, tucked neatly in my pocket.

The cohesive forces that keep my heart afloat are stretched to their limit.
The blood in my veins is so thin the cells separate and I phase through into the cracks of a broken sidewalk.
So tall and sharp are the walls of this crevice.  
No matter how jagged the surface the handholds loosen and crumble to dust in my clenched fists.

They say rock bottom makes for a good foundation upon which to grow.
But the rain that beats down on my head erodes the stone and I fall further than ever before.
I swim to the surface for breath but its late in the year and the rain is cold.
Floating there shivering and shaking, my blood thins again and I slide down into the darkness.
Arms spread sinking deeper and deeper, the air bubbles trapped in the stone release and brush my skin as they speed around the contours of my flesh finding the quickest path to freedom, to happiness.

A few outstretched arms reach down to pull me back into the sun.
My skin is so cold their palms freeze to my body and I pull them down with me a distance.
Eventually they cut themselves free but I took their hands.
I kept a part of them with me on my great descent, it was not my intent.
As I lay on the hard seafloor I can see their feint scorned faces staring at me through the warped wavy surface, grasping their severed limbs.
I'm sorry.

The room has movement with an inkling of calmness.
Faces speak at each other, the corners of their mouths skewed upward in smiles and laughter.
Everything has serenity in this cage, even the people.
The orange hues drape the room in mists of dusty ray.
Beneath the ground the exposed ceiling casts reflecting light off the wooden beams.

I watch the fluid surface bubble rising through the lava lamp.
The orange light passing through the cylindrical glass reflects the vivid colors of a green and purple ocean ebbing across the wall.
Scan the room my eyes catch those of another.
A single wink sends me free falling through the looking glass.
The space between the beams above writhe with living organs, and I fall backwards into nothingness.

I blackout.
The eyes flutter open and I'm no longer myself.
I'm trapped.
The elongated glass chrysalis envelops everything that I am.
I breathe.
The air rushes into my lungs through segmented tubes strapped to my face.
I'm paralysed.

This godly creature form is who I truly am, I'm all knowing.
The body somewhat twisted and deformed it feeds constant.
Eyes move but they alone, body frozen in fetal.
I watch the show it fills me and I watch myself in the glitch.
The cubic projection slides the landscape under my human feet as I move.  
Each interaction, each step, each emotion transferred from the mind of the beast, my beast, my true self.
My skin is naked stripped of filament, blue and cold but just cold enough to be cool to the touch.
This form is eternal and yearns for stimulation.
The only way it can do this is to temporarily erase its mind and project it into the great simulation of life.  
Both sides are learning both sides are real.
One knows forever, unending in knowledge and that life is meaningless stimulation.
The other searches hopelessly for the meaning of life but ultimately
ends its inconsequential life cycle.
The cycle's knowledge, emotions, experiences transferred into the mind of the creature as an afternoon snack in an endless day.

I blackout.
The eyes snap open, I've returned to the simulation.
I panic.
The room is not what it was before.
I'm alone in my bed, the lights are on.
Objects are wavy and reality realigns itself.
I've been given a glimpse of what lies beyond our realm.
My life has no answer, I will never be great, I am worthless.
Death means nothing, life means nothing.
I'm trapped in here, this earth, I'm trapped out there, the next.
My life amounts to nothing more than the feeling of a scratched itch.
Just one of many collected experiences moulded in the mind of an eternal.

Sleep escapes me.
I've felt feint clues of what laid dormant in my mind for so long.
The chemical key unleashed it and now.
Now I'm consumed by it.
In the waking hours it stabs.
Stabs.
Stabs!, at the frontal cortex of my brain like a railroad spike being driven into the ground.
The tears, the feelings, they've all floated away before the coming storm.
The mixture of taurine, caffeine, sugar, and citric acid has a slight burn as it slides down my throat.
It's been raining for a month.
Everyday I walk through it.
I let the droplets drip down my lenses.
It somehow adds a small bit of feeling, a short moment of tranquillity watching them slowly stream across the front of my eyes.
I reach the cafe, the same spot everyday.
I pretend to read but I spend hours watching the ripples form on the sidewalk through window pane.
This is the second, third day without slumber.
Vision is less clear with each passing hour.
No matter, it's still there in my mind.
And now I'm in public there's no escape.
Is this all I am now? Is this all there is?
I wonder what she's doing? I wonder who she's doing?
She's so cold anyway, no passion for life.
I'm the same in some ways but at least I'm taking initiative, taking steps to improve, at least I don't settle for the mundane.
She wasn't good for you!
I keep convincing myself over and over.
The repetition itself is maddening!
Sleep escapes me.
I need sleep to escape.
She's not in my dreams anymore.
She wasn't good for me.

Sitting in a quiet place.
Listening to the ideas blossom in our minds.
The noise never ending.
When our thoughts and ideas dissipate.
They're eventually forgotten.
They were never spoken.
Billions of unsaid words floating around us.
Residual in the mind or not.
Theses words, they travel somewhere.
Whether these concepts were significant or the split second reminder of unwashed dishes.
These thoughts fly someplace calm.
That place, that realm is truly quiet.

Dear Harlot
You kept my soul in check.
The loneliness encased was spent.
Wonders of unending flesh.
And yet the scent is fleeting.
The seclusion returns afresh.
The ethereal heart deceiving.

What once brought sweet memories.
Now are void parentheses.
My empty arms are bare.
In addition a cadaverous stare.
Skin cold with horripilation.
Trudging on in desolation.

I long for comfort I confess.
To the skies I do profess.
For on the ground my feet shall stay.
Am I worthy whose to say.

Another harlot.
Anther day.
Not my harlot.
Not my harlot.
Not my harlot.

A glimpse of her visage I pray.
Solitude is how I pay.

Each mind is situated on  the spectrum of belief and reality.
Both ends suffer in their search for the truth.
The man who spends his life navigating the spiritual realm.
He attempts to find the greater purpose for everything.
Every blade of grass, each eroded stone a symbol of something bigger.
The nuances of life analysed and expanded upon to their very limit.
Given meaning in the name of God or the foreshadowing omen of an individual.

The man who traverses reality, grounded in science and logistics.
His mind filled with hypotheses.
Observing outcomes to explain the inexplicable.
He fits his grass and stones into the puzzle of a greater system.
In doing so he is God and the purpose for all things he assigns.

Both men strive to be the voice heard by the masses.
Their findings recorded, read, believed.
In the end does it truly matter.
Two lives spent.
Kneeling, yearning for some kind of affirmation that their time was spent correctly.
That they added anything to the greater scheme.
Pages upon pages filled with every detail in a grain of sand.
The end comes, the ink runs, the pages wither to dust, knowledge lost, purpose forgotten.
The world keeps turning.

Some lack the intelligence to question.
Successfully saturated in meaningless pleasure.
Content with the everyday.
Is the answer found in ignorance?
In Bliss?
No, it is only constant escape.
A blindfold of euphoria.
The alpha enjoys life but never feels the need to understand fully.

In this new age there are those.
Those who bestow false titles on themselves.
Titles to distract for what they deem is personal happiness.

Happiness is a chemical distraction.
The avoidance of happiness lays bare the foundations of life.
Depression broadens the mind but overwhelms the individual.
Substance expands the mind.
New thoughts, new processes.
The key is not found in fungi.
Through it, the introduction to the question is bestowed.

Life, the most widespread joke without a punchline.
We throw ourselves into the playground for amusement, some way to pass the endless stream of time.
We have the power to do many terrible great things but not the will to perform.
We drown in our misunderstanding and want for companionship.
No one wants to meet what comes next alone.
We surround ourselves with the others but are they real or just figments of the great simulation.
Which ones are REAL?
What does it all mean?
We ask repeatedly and distract from the oncoming dread by soaking our brains in pleasure and petty tasks.
When there is none to be found we suffer in nothingness.
Crave the meaning of it all, but fear the truth.
Map the endless universe for an answer but only so far is the reach of a crafted lens.
Sometimes we think we see the solution in the sparkle of another's eyes but love.
Love is but another falsity.
Eventually everything fades, even one's biological function for passion.
Whatever we are, we were meant to seek the answer.
If there is none, we suffer internally eternally.
This is Hell!
What comes next is endless slumber, trapped in the pod of another plain of existence.
Until we dare to amuse ourselves again.
Memory wiped.
The experiment.
The thrill.
The punchline revealed!