Twentynothing

For Aleš, who reads pacifist novels during wartime I For the Millennials: Victims of opportunity, Saviors of humanity. Muse-less, useless, a twentynothing! We, the Confounded Chiliads, are the electrified pulsating offspring of the digital age: Serendipitous, enigmatic vagabonds of the modern world. Standing juxtaposed between two centuries, two generations: Redeemers of the new millennium. We’ve read the writings on the wall, for they have been by our own hand. Blood dripping down the fluorescent page, the endless scroll that consumes our gaze. Gaping holes in our hands and feet, screaming telephone poles pin us to the magnetic current. We are trapped but we are not alone. With every word we bleed, with every eye to our flesh, our cries are drowned in the digital void. We have been washed away by alluded idiosyncrasies, never unanimous nor harmonious; feeling our fingers tie into knots, mangled, finagled, wringing, hovering like a Ouija board over menacing letters. We close our eyes and feel them burning within our skull. So many voices, so many bodies, pouring into our thoughts; endless rainfall drowning the long coveted silence. So desperate for the parting of bawdy storm clouds, for a sign from heaven to pierce through the ceaseless night, to cast its lovely gaze upon us like a father’s warm and gentle hand, lifting up downcast faces. We toil in our anguish, suffering information overload; a whole race of individuals accumulating into a massive “I told you so.” Every wish, every genius mind, every glance into the future, every crystal ball rubbed, Electric Eye awakened as the dream sighs into existence; the blending of fact and fiction in the prophesies of Fathers Orwell and Huxley: maddened forlorn oracles of modernity. As we cross the rivers of Babylon to find ourselves swimming in the Fountain of Youth we escape dripping, exhausted; aching bodies shivering. They drape expensive towels around us, breathing warmly on our exasperated shells of humanity. Our mortal vessels no longer capable of carrying our fragile identities, we leap out of their torpid mouths exposing the gelatinous crustacean. Amorphous brain matter sponge-like, soaking up the sweat of our plunder and plight— Clinging desperately as our liberators pry us off the wet earth like barnacles off a ship’s keel, wringing us out over the supper bowl: the thin soup of mortal consciousness. Feeling our voices and vices, virtues and virulence, mingling together; meshing into one. The hive mind descends upon us, protruding a gaping straw from its abdominous being; sticking it into the electric ocean, proceeds to suck life up into its wrinkly, sickly tightened mouth. Past the gleeful tongue, down the throat; tumbling over each other aimlessly in the darkness— limitless potentialities. Directionless; ambiguous voices in the dark: cavernous, mindless cacophony. Echoes bouncing off the windows of my soul, I tumbled into the darkness lost, and afraid. “The world is yours!” I never feel my feet stop moving. Our nightmarish episode of consumption concludes, leaving us moaning, naked, confused in the depths: Haunting spirits wandering these novel dwellings built on the backs of the olden brutes and the barbarous archetypic minds of the Marxist prophets. In this world of post-civilization, we are post-human(e) in our efforts; unable to gain a foothold in the foundation— more quicksand than earth and stone. Our seeds were thrown to the weeds and the crows. II Muse-less, useless, a twentynothing! I glance at the others: gangly gangrenous guiles! Feasting on each other, never growing any stronger; clawing out each other’s eyes, spitting in their mouths, screaming utterances most foul in their ears. Climbing over each other in the obscurity, unseen. I want them to take my eyes. I want them to take my ears. I want them to take my voice. I want them to squelch the flame that burns within my cadaverous chest. Surrendering any chance of agency; if there were hands to bite, I couldn’t see. I hear the voices shouting, but I can’t cut through the discord. What if I hold my breath? But I know that won’t last. Feeling my lips turn purple, the kick drum in my chest: furious relentless crescendo pace quickening mind’s racing all the sins in the world rotting in my soul inescapable pounding at the door clock ticking through the floor lungs shrivel can’t take anymore— Exhale. Panting, hands on my knees, ears perk up to the sound of malicious snickering. I lift my gaze up to an eclipse of the moon, so ghastly in fresh blemishes plaguing its majesty. Squinting, I see smiling faces, eyes full of mocking laughter, belonging to snide children anxiously peering into the crowded fishbowl. They watch us squirm without water, dancing in aching bodies, craving the touch of something cool, and refreshing. They dangle hope and promise like lifeless puppets encircling an infant’s crib. I watch them tie onto simple strings: wealth, and power, and love, and belonging. Reaching higher, and higher, straining formless muscles, feeling weakness overcome creeping up like a tired conscience climbing over the golden crest atop the transparent foothills encased in the nicotine screen skyline. It hangs its head low on its hands and knees, lifting up a weary voice so familiar and ignored. A final sigh ringing in the ears of a generation: A cough, and then a final weak sputter: “I Told You So.” III Muse-less, useless, a twentynothing! Anchored to the next big thing sitting below deceptive still waters murky mysterious loathesome beast peeking an eye out to catch us peering over the edge of the docks a glimpse at the promised eternity immortality delusion of grandeur our eyes to the shore nostalgia preserved in the retellings of folklore childhoods never forgotten for fear of being lost in the present and the forthcoming future always a step away how can we move on when we’re busy cutting off our legs to be eye level with our inner child more like an exoskeleton more exposed than our need to grow we sit huddled in our bemired despair grinning sheepishly exposing our sin crying out to the gargantuan overlord of childlike fantasy wielding our innocence like a button-eyed ragdoll gluttonous treasure keeper playing with fire in the alchemist’s den so close to our material wealth with the flames roaring lapping at our heels feeling the dock begin to break from dry land from the weight of our inflated consciences/consciousness following the fangs of the snake to our parents on the shore with one hand sweating on the television remote strangling in its grasp they have no choice but to squeeze the pump harder and faster legs of flesh and bone break and give way we begin to drift from the shore pulling closer to the murky behemoth that lurks under the perpetual offing in the empty horizon we cry our broken hearts into its cosmic bowels feeling ourselves being sifted through the hungry machinery of death eyes luminous we shield our faces from its rapturous gaze fearful of the pillar of salt that will stand in our place but we look back we take our hand off the plow with Sodom and Gomorrah at our backs we peer through the electric eye the sands of time pouring through the hourglass that spits us into the depths of eternal strife. IV Muse-less, useless, a twentynothing! Twentynothing! Twentynothing! Twentynothing! Twentynothing in the classrooms! Twentynothing in the workforce! Twentynothing in the bathrooms! Twentynothing in our parents' wars! Twentynothing in the golden streets! Twentynothing in the broken homes! Twentynothing in the dusty libraries! Twentynothing in the TV's drone! Twentynothing in the Promised Land! Twentynothing in the songs we sing! Twentynothing in the secret plans! Twentynothing in freedom ring! Twentynothing in hands over hearts! Twentynothing in our love in bed! Twentynothing in the obscure route’s start! Twentynothing in the lies we've read! Twentynothing in the lives we fear! Twentynothing in the scholar’s debt! Twentynothing in our guns held dear! Twentynothing in the tables set! Twentynothing in the colors of skin! Twentynothing in the reality show! Twentynothing in the losses and win! Twentynothing in the nightmares below! Twentynothing in the kisses we hide! Twentynothing in the I O U’s! Twentynothing in the chanting of pride! Twentynothing in the love you too’s! Twentynothing in the hope we give! Twentynothing in the dread they moan! Twentynothing in the time we live! Twentynothing in the chance we own! Muse-less, useless, Twentynothing! In the post-modern world aimless! We, the Confounded Chiliads: We are dangerous, We are longing, We are hopeful, We are broken, We are serendipitous— We are eternal. We Are Twentynothing. …and that’s damn well something.

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Written by

jarjarrhine

24 / M

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