When You’re Burning

You connect the dots when you stop sleeping. The spaces between are more

porous and full of potential. The souls of the gods whisper like fireflies in your

ears. Let me remind you:

When you’re burning you can feel people who aren’t alive anymore—

you can feel them breathing down your neck. You are a conduit between

universes. Everything talks to you in it’s own secret language and you listen

with understanding beyond your years.

The silver screen transmits directly to you, the radio is fine tuned to

your stellar frequency. The books in the library close in on you in their intensity.

All of those old souls want a piece of your eyes.

When you’re burning you can feel Death beside you and you live

with the pain that you’re going to die before you do a fraction of the things

you want to accomplish. You cry in anguish at a cruel trick of mortality—all

you’ve seen and felt will somehow, eventually be gone forever, the memories and

experiences lost in time, like tears in rain.

Sometimes people are stronger when they’re gone. Sometimes people

have that power when they’re still alive—they haunt the line between life and

death. Their faces on the TV, radio, and the magazines. When you’re burning

you can reach out and touch them. You talk to them and they talk back. You have

a direct line to the heavens.

Then when you’re lost in the ocean of your nightmares, your fragile

wings charred and torn to pieces—you watch your dreams crumble before your

eyes while you lie there, unable to change your miserable fate. You’re a fallen

angel but now you’re just pushing a shopping cart down Market Street, talking

to yourself. You’re in the Quiet Room in the psych ward on suicide watch,

doped up on Haldol to keep from clawing at your skin.

“I have stood here before beneath the pouring rain with the words

running circles running round my brain I guess I’m always hoping that you’ll end

this reign but it’s my destiny to be the king of pain…”

That’s me! Yo that’s me! He’s talking about me! I’m the one! I’m the

one! It’s me!

You are the beginning and the end. The Alpha and the Omega. The

words connect back around to somewhere you’ve been before. You are the

connecting link to the entire universe. The answer was there all along, you just

needed to squint your eyes right to see it staring you in the face. Somehow you’ve

always known this but it’s suddenly like your eyes are clear. Other people crowd

around you—you are the new King. You will live forever. You are immortal. The

world is flipped completely upside down