Where are you?
Could you name this place?
The escalator breaks and everyone complains that they have to walk.
Your feet don't hurt yet.
You see your reflection in the glass window overlooking the city
And you don't recognize yourself.
You're just another faded face in the dark.

These little ants
In their yellowing house,
Speaking of revolutions
Talking about ideas far too big for their tiny heads.
They stutter and almost implode from the pressure
Of these unfathomable thoughts.

There are too many paintings on the walls.
Getting old puts a damper on things, doesn't it?
Some of us have bigger forces behind them,
Against them,
For them.
You're beginning to understand why some people don't get better.

If things were different,
If things were different,
If things were different --
Over and over, you tell yourself this.
You write it all over your skin.
You scream it, but no one even hears you.
You are starting to lose your voice.

everyone knows something
that you have never heard of.
and there is one thing that you know
which no one else does.

don't you feel special?

one list, two hands
cut off at the wrists,
three and a half bags of sand.

for centuries I was in constant dread
of this night:
the culmination of something
that was only pure
and strangely clean,
yet it still made us tremble.

all these people
progressing like a restless sea
shifting plates under my feet
everyone is here.

no one is here.

emerging from the cave
and quivering even so.
hundreds of faces,
those colors blended together
an onslaught of trepidation.

[just like raw skin,
I feel it more than a muscle does.
I'm the untreated wound;
I am shuddering at the touch.]

don't shoot --

you'll scare the animal away.

oh, but it's too late.

these days,
it's a gradual, shaky descent;
I'm waning, deteriorating,
I can feel myself getting worse.

I am not a rock
nor do I fall through fingers
like water,
and I can tell that you're parched.
I can feel you trying
to melt me.

you can't hide in the bushes
or pull the floorboards up over your head
anymore.
it's gone too far.

where's the fun
in someone
you can't drag around?

see how the animals
scatter immediately
from the empty field
as the rifle is fired.

look at how inconvenient that is.
it isn't worth it.
and now it isn't a secret.

no one knows
until they know.

and now they know.

In this dream world, you were my only reality.