Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
Feb 2010
30 seconds.
The translucent window of dreams gets blown open by the quivering baseline, that echo’s throughout this Technicolor city. The distant horizon of reality, depression and cracked council estate morals are long forgotten. The piercing taste of alcohol stings the back of my neck but melts my stomach and helps free the tormented thoughts that plague an overworked mind. Smoke another joint, dance another dance; my feet emulate feelings that cannot be described. ***** sits heavy in my mind, delaying my reactions and isolating my judgment. An old friend who takes the **** dances pasts with a former lover that once kept my heart safely locked up beside hers. Even though the blood of that love dried months ago, the scars are still visible beneath my skin and they scream across my truthful eyes. I decide to let myself drop further into the ever deepening baseline of the city; I feel my eyes plummet into the empty space of my head. The beat of my heart has been removed and replaced by the pulsing nerve of the city. The blinding lights dazzle my imagination and urge me to forget the grey concrete that surrounds this city, the music pumps and drives life’s blood around my clogged veins and the vibrations shake my fragile frame.

I pull another slightly crushed cigarette to my cracked lips, and let the cold night begin the battle against the warm tobacco that flows into my once pure lungs. Poisonous substances help me feel the sweet taste of life, of love, of music. Realism is forgotten about, the boundaries of life are melting in the bottom of a pit somewhere, let them dissolve and never return. Sober problems twist their ankles and fall into the **** soaked gutter, whilst I let myself drown in a moment of sweet nothing. There is no time to be thinking about girls or love, there is no time for idle conversation under the glare of the moon. For a brief moment I watch packs of men move like wolfs circling on the innocence of girls, buy them another drink, crush them another pill. I stumble back into this disillusioned factory that was once a foundation of an honest wage and the reliable structure of a family dinner. Now it is falling to pieces, unable to cope with this tormenting beat that is shaking through my body.  This place is like a time warp, hours feel like minutes yet seconds feel like days.

The first step is admitting defeat; the second is allowing the ******* to begin. I allow the liquor to not only caress but baptize my tongue. I am a puppet to the baseline, a slave being held by strings that are attached to the stars. These stars rise higher than any city skyline can imagine they refuse to be beaten by man; they stay a part of our superstition, a character in our dreams.  In the corners of intoxication the weak fall, unable to cope with the choice of freedom. They recline into a murky puddle of sweat and fear. Their eyes vibrate subconsciously and their legs twitch to the ever changing beat. For me there is no murky puddle, I am lost at sea rolling between the waves, letting the current take me where it pleases. The breeze caresses my consciousness and tickles my sedation.

Without hesitation my feet start moving again, finding a groove that my mind didn’t even know existed, I feel myself slip into a new unknown level, finally even the strings attached to the stars snap from the tension. My mind is free; it is no longer a hundred mile-an-hour switchboard that is overrun by lights and flashes. Frozen fireworks that were once subdued by the oppression of reality, become lukewarm and vibrate on the verge of ecstasy, I feel them take off into the night, one after another, throwing images into the dark sky. Like 1940 they blitz the city and people run for cover shouting screaming for their loved ones.  Yet the nightly residence of this factory remain unworried and free. We are the last of the human race not to flee into our suburbia homes, so listen to this erratic baseline and forget about the yellow hooded figures that patrol the streets, let the night lurch you into a sudden paradox where nobody belongs yet everybody searches for. This is true euphoria.
Written by
Declin James
2.0k
   ---, wray adame and Victoria Reese
Please log in to view and add comments on poems