Feral

Tired of the same old thing and having been beaten to a numbed pulp by the status quo, you and I take a bottle of bourbon down to the boat docks to watch the sunset on the water before the stars come out overhead. These are strange times made even stranger by the fact that we thought we’d already been through everything that could possibly break us apart.  But nothing is forever and there’s simply no easy way to explain to you why in a manner which doesn’t sound callus. Cruel. Foolish. Cumbersome. The things which swim around in my soul are complicated and deep and it’s not that you can’t understand me it’s that it’s really quite possible that nobody can. The birds in the reeds are singing their various springtime songs out across the bay, oblivious to death and viruses and Wall Street and all the rest. Humans would be better off to stay hidden away from nature as long as possible. We’ve become too toxic, too plastic, too chemically infested. I could swear the squirrels and the soft flowering trees look a good bit happier with us all locked inside. Pollution is clearing, smog is lifting, there are actual swans swimming and dolphins splashing gleefully about in a sea port in Venice. As the human race appears to be hell bent on offing itself, creatures all around us great and small rejoice for the end of the world as we have abused it and dance forward into a time when we leave them in well deserved peace. Taking a swallow, I scan the horizon as my insides warm in contrast to the cool air of evening. The smell of wet wood and sandy beach. How many times I sat here with you looking out into a fiery distance which is both frightening and awe inspiring as the sky turns to streaks of reds, purples, and electric pinks. What is the future we think we want to build together and why would we ever think it could work. I go left when you go right and in the end that might be what does it, it’s impossible to be sure. All I know is I don’t want to end up like everyone else because everyone else is barely holding it all together. They work some job to pay the bills for a house and a lawn and a couple of kids. The spark leaves their eyes only to be replaced by the anxious look a wild animal gets when it suddenly discovers it’s trapped in a cage. Though they smile, something behind their fake expression is cut through with sharp alarm. Instead of freedom, calculations are being made, trade offs, compromises, accommodations, until they no longer recognize themselves in the mirror. As they scroll like zombies through their Facebook feeds, something inside their perfectly performed existence always feels like it’s just about to snap.