Conflagration And Senseless Hope

A l e x a n d e r P r a d o


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there is something so strange swimming in my head. some choked river i'm swimming in downslope from the future's volcano. something's stirring, shaking, shelling. like the moment between the bomb's shrieks to the pitch of imminent proximity, and the first flick of your eyes toward the trenches. i don’t know why moods overtake us. it may be what we see, what we dream, what we’re missing, what we’ve had too much of. Cormac’s The Road haunts me. conflagration and senseless hope. that is the world in one measure or another. we strive for what is possible, what is available, what the lessons of the night can lend to morning. something shivers inside me. waking or dying in tremors beelike and directional. something is behind me, threatening me, pushing up through the mental layers of control and conciliation. what scares me most is that this monster of foreign darkness, of staining miasma, of irresistible pain, is merely myself. but the adverb ‘merely’ is only another feint, a ruse to play the trick of seeing it casual and not causal. the demons that dwell within us are the most deadly instruments. they are that, made by us, that screech around bladed mouths designed solely for injury to ourselves. our personal monsters know us, seek us, can never be left behind. the darkness dreams of us. it waits beside us for the brief lapses in reason to bloom blood and breath. this waits within all of us. none are immune to such diseases of the psyche. inconsolable madness we were born from. we are but buskers pole spinning plates of sanity, dancing to music only we hear, only we conjure, colorful street mimes screaming their names into the faces of strangers in the mirror, actors playing in the amphitheatre of our skulls, improvising lines and life. I wonder who inside is left behind. what parallels of time never breathe for fear of discovering who we really are, what we’re really capable of. something is singing the eerie light of dying stars, somewhere beyond the event horizon. i hear it. how long can i not answer?

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