Wonderland.....
Early friday evening,
The warm bubble of conversation reaches the awkward corner of the bar I occupy,
me, myself and I,
the social pariah camping out at the edge of their borders.
Their warming web of words and laughter wraps me up like the best kind of worst blanket.
Wooly enough to promise warmth,
but itchy enough to keep me awake at night,
waiting for the damp as I sweat the small stuff.
I am surrounded by enough technology on this table to land a dream on the moon,
Sitting pretty,
hearing the lives around me sparkle and devouring others on screen,
knitting together ideas of friends
like spaghetti that doesn't care.
And I am Alone.
The hubble bubble of the friendships around me drown me in the shame of my lonely place.
I see a pretty girl on the table opposite,
I mentally scratch off the layers of her personality that she wears like costume jewellery.....
layers like the silver on the scratch card love disguises itself to be.
She is cute...
and smart enough to raise the vibrational level of the meanest of hearts
but it isn't the heart I fear......
its the vibration..
Even dream frequencies are measured in Hz (hurts)
And I know only to well from the death of the last hope
that I would rather be amused than have a muse right now.
Disappointment is the underpass that tunnels under that rocky road my friend.
I would rather go under it
than find myself washed up and pointless at the side of some highway that promised me the destination …....
only to leave me thumbing a lift in my tattered tears.
Bleak words tumble out of me
but my melancholy doesn't phase me,
if anything it spurs me on.
Im aware of the contrast of the happy throng
and the carpenters singing,
singing their songs..
shaping my reality from the juke box that mocks
Long ago and oh so far away
I fell in love with you before the second show
Your guitar, it sounds so sweet and clear
But you're not really here
It's just the radio
And i'm tuning into that show tonight.
That melody stamping itself into passport pages that are taking me nowhere special.
Thats fine.
I just keep writing the wrongs while they keep singing their songs.
At least I didn't put a pound into that joy machine …
I will just write and write until its right my friend
in the hope that you hear the melody of my madness and decide to set me free.
There are so many souls crammed into this fake laughter tinged with real happiness that I wonder which one of them will surrender first.
On cue some hipster in a hat approaches.
A young fresh mind returning empty chairs he took from my table.
He apologises for the noise,
chair legs screeching like chalk on the blackboard that has taught me nothing again and again and again...
I wonder why he didn't apologise for his beard.
His Friend places an empty bottle in front of me
Smiling in their leaving dance,
Jocular waves betray an oblivious naivety that was washed out of me too long ago.
Finally my table is set,
like Alice's wonderland at the rabbit hole cafe somewhere downtown on any given day.
My empty chairs join the conversation
mocking me with flat faced seats,
exposing their backs with petulant child sulking in a flavour I can taste like its real.
Those chairs...placed with such conviction.
So firmly as if to assure me of my own happy throng
And that I will be serenaded by a different song....
That maybe...
Just maybe,
you will step out of the gloom and light up this room
like a candle fiercely burning the breeze that threatens its very existence ….
in a defiant show of optimism so strong......
it could melt polar bears.
In the mean time, I sip my cider,
bathing in the joy of others like Im drunk and carefree in some hotel,
some place,
some time,
somewhere else.
With the product of this moments madness haunting the laptop screen,
I click save
and wonder wether saving oneself is as easy
as the click imprinting zeros and ones onto insides of some fancy machine
Somehow I doubt it... but its done...
I close the screen as easily as closing the pages of a book
That candle will flicker....
but for now I feel the wind in my face unchecked and I am too tired,
stubborn, stupid, bored, bitter and broken to burn away the wind like you do.
I would rather take that blanket for all its itching and fashion it into some kind of sail
so I can sail the fuck out of here...
you would be welcome to join me...
I would invite you.....
but the truth is, in a sea of a billion faces,
I don't know which one you are.
Sean Holland
December 2015
