Simple Tendencies

Does Anyone Think How I Think?

Does anyone think how I think?

The words that scramble in my skull

like the static from the television

of my grandmother\'s living room.

 

The voices that clamor for attention

as they bash their brains

into the walls of my own

and shatter themselves into kaleidoscopes

that riot colors behind my eyes.

 

The fears that quell hope

like a candle doused

by the waters of Hurricane Isaac

circa 2004, while I flee

from the bus stop,

raincoat shining like a gold coin

at the bottom of a fountain.

 

Do they hear the songs 

that flow and morph

and dance to their own tempos,

like cascading light waves

crashing into themselves 

in a discordant stream of consciousness

that I struggle to control?

 

Do they taste the sweat beading on my lip, 

as I hold cue cards in front of an audience

that wants only for me

to plummet off the stage

and mesh bloodily into the orchestral pit,

and whisper my last line to the trumpet

collecting dust

from my sixth grade year?

 

I ask these questions, not as a rumination,

nor a ruination,

nor any kind of rationale

that ponders the intricate clockwork 

of the working mind.

 

I ask only that I might know if I am

as alone as I feel

and that the touch

of sin

might one day become the caress of God.

And that, in the end, He cares, too.