In a slow motion haze I look out over the grey Philadelphia in a fog bank. The tops of the buildings obscured. Floor after floor continuing into space for all I know. Sitting here watching the faint movement of the odd tree, leafless in December. Opening to a world with which I am yet familiar, the window. Outside cars in a constant stream. Always the places-to-be calling louder than any horn or crash of impact, louder than any amount of glass shatter. People on the freeway, on the city streets, and in between in the alleys and narrowed roads going (they say) no where. Somehow we all find time to extract some value from this moment. Some sort of consolation for being. As if love weren’t enough that we had to go around printing in on paper and digging it out of the ground in gleaming golden handfuls. Then again, perhaps it’s not. Or perhaps there’s some sort of figuring out we’ve left to do. Some more Earth to be moved aside to find the treasures there. Dig deep enough and it’s all molten. All a liquid swishing heat. Why do we put such pressure on ourselves? From where comes this burning desire to have in our hands and to know without a doubt what it is we are made of? Have we not seen that death is inevitable? Still the reaching continues, down and out into the dregs. Soon we’ll find it. Soon. The gem must be there beneath this last scrap of **** and ripped bits of newspaper. Beneath these stones overgrown in moss. Still further beneath the metals collecting and pooling in toxic natural vats of too much nutrient. Into the solid iron core of the Earth under pressure. There we’ll find another absence. Another outer space waiting for the claiming. Yet in all our grasping we will never hold a fistful of love. True love, true happiness. Serotonin wash water over the coils is never enough to cool the white flame of need. Even if artificial and limping on the last prosthetic legs made from the long dead detritus plastics, the flame rages. It will not be sated by the material and forever the eating will continue. Finding silence in the storm is the true gem. The hollow in your heart is what beats your blood thru your body, what walks your legs and chews your food. To find respect for a lack of satisfaction is what will save us if ever we need it. Sated with hunger, patient with pain. "What is to give light must endure burning."