it's simple really, nostalgia is buried in a melody
the same way humans are put in coffins--
deliberately heart-wrenching, a science.
an old transistor radio climbs lazily in the background,
buzzing, humming but then hear it--
blank stares as the road carries on, gradually,
slow mascara rivulets kiss cheeks like the intimacy long forgotten only to come rushing back--
songs that we said were ours were never ours to have,
an old familiar lyric that we claimed to spell destiny,
auditory memories that taunt and torture:
the chorus only instigates barbed thorns to lonesome hearts,
major chords aren't happy,
but cause discordance--
clenched fists on the steering wheel, you must pullover--
you can't pause or rewind, you can't stop--
yes, change the channel--
but the music still plays, and the riffs hang in your head,
remembered and reminisced over static--
but nothing is white noise when the final notes linger on your auditory palette,
the taste like the stare of a cold gravestone...

but even colder still,
the empty seat next to you.

The tree of knowledge was the tree of reason.
That's why the taste of it
drove us from Eden. That fruit
was meant to be dried and milled to a fine powder
for use a pinch at a time, a condiment.
God had probably planned to tell us later
about this new pleasure.
We stuffed our mouths full of it,
gorged on but and if and how and again
but, knowing no better.
It's toxic in large quantities; fumes
swirled in our heads and around us
to form a dense cloud that hardened to steel,
a wall between us and God, Who was Paradise.
Not that God is unreasonable – but reason
in such excess was tyranny
and locked us into its own limits, a polished cell
reflecting our own faces. God lives
on the other side of that mirror,
but through the slit where the barrier doesn't
quite touch ground, manages still
to squeeze in – as filtered light,
splinters of fire, a strain of music heard
then lost, then heard again.