Sidewalks

Strange now to think of you, gone without a statue tall and strong left in your memory, as I stumble down the uneven paths of my mind.
I've been up all night, talking, talking, reading Frost aloud, listening to Hendrix shout madness on the record player.
And I read his few triumphant stanzas aloud-wept, realizing how we suffer--
And how Death is that remedy all singers dream of, sing, remember, prophesied like Revelations.

Hiding behind memories so hastily forgotten-- time reminiscent of a tortoise and a hare in a story once recited-- the final moment. The lemming jumping with no qualms.
And what comes after,
looking back at the mind itself and how it made its mark.
It's a flash away, the great dreams of Me or You could fall in a crumpled mess in a short moment, found in a dingy closet.

No more to say, and nothing to weep for but the Dreamers in the Dream, trapped in its perpetuations,
sighing, floating, crying, buying and selling, worshipping themself,
worshipping the Higher Power they wish they could understand.
The thought leaps about me not unlike a dying butterfly,
while it's hues ring clear the beats of its failing wings stutter.

So I go out and walk along the boulevard, my eyes look back over my shoulder and find themselves longing for the playgrounds I once loved, and in an instant the infinity of sky above me dwarfs my reflections and nostalgia, reminding me of my purpose or the lack thereof.
Struggling like the others meandering down the sidewalk divided by cracks towards new see-saws reminiscent of the ones I understand.
Toward education love school nervous breakdowns love and learning to be obscenely beautiful, like in a dream?

You thought you knew, and I thought I knew; strange to have made it where I am by the sidewalks littered with the defilement of the strangers who think they know,
their cries polluting the smoky air with banter better left to unkempt dorms.
But now I accept their infected tirades as belonging to those unknowingly arrogant, who find solace in the cracks of the sidewalk,
maybe they wish to break their mothers back.

And we're not old now, by the way.
Myself, anyhow.
Maybe as young or old as the universe-- and I guess that dies with us too, the propensity to ask questions often left unanswered.
But what is now will be gone in a moment everytime, leaving no room for regret, which is all well,
though at that moment it ravages the psyche, questioning intentions like the narcissist you are.

And it's in this last moment that I hope to remember, and witness the luminescent movie in that split fraction of a moment, the faces of the strangers who walked my same sidewalk.
The ones who squinted into the sun because they were told not to, and were blinded.
Those who pushed me out of the way, who I thought rude but were only escaping the invisible demons that bit at their ankles.
The ones with repulsive faces with hearts that bled red blood like mine.

For when you leave the house, you're out of the house forever; whether you turned the knob with no apparent keyhole or knocked down the door in a desperate mania to escape.
Either way, it's not up to you. There, rest. No more suffering for you. I know which sidewalks you've casually strolled, those which you've spitefully spurned. For I've gone where you've gone, my shoes have well worn souls.
So walk with me, fingers intertwined, because sometimes the cracks in the sidewalks run horizontal like canyons,
and I'm terribly afraid of heights.