It is odd that this recollection comes upon me now.

This faintly haunting memory of a feeling that

Escapes the commonality of ordinary language.

All that I have retained is the scar of that faceless nameless emotion,

Not nearly enough for which to compose prose.

Now as the air about me is heavier than I am,

Thick with a choking biting taste of underripe citrus.

Now as a draft from somewhere, I can’t tell, sweeps nearly through me,

Hinting of oregano, saffron, coriander and cayenne.

Now as I feel a heart-stopping pinch in my chest, a stitch of sorts

In my lungs that makes breathing nigh unbearable,

Now as a tire tests its brakes, squealing across the freshly hardened asphalt

That I have just walked across, to get to this place, this room, this empty

Room.

There is a troubling atmosphere in this place.

The odor of vacancy, of sawdust, of old metal, of dry stale air.

It is so ghastly still that I must be imagining that aural instigation,

What sounds like the wind from the rustling wings of perdition.

I suppose it is also odd that I sit here, with no real reason or purpose.

My mind is working, struggling to get at it, with a Herculean vehemence,

A palpitating sponge seeking to osmose all of life, life as it stands,

Life as it stands in this empty, empty room.

And then, it was not so empty, as if the vacuum of the void had been

Shut off with the flick of an omnipotent light switch.

I waited now, waited for the reaction to me, sitting in the room

That was no longer empty, but nowhere near full. I set my gaze

In that direction with a ferocity that surprises me,

An emulation of the force of a black wooden mallet

Beating a stubbornly bent steel nail into a wall of alabaster Jerusalem stone.

The savagery of my silent paroxysm prompted a step back, and then another,

Until the room was empty once more. Thus was I witness to the

Ravaging of my soul by my self, to the separation of all that is from all that ought to be.

at times, I too almost dream

a rustic haze of nostalgia covers me

unable and unwilling to lay down the past

my future is nearly here, but I think I can outrun her

the nature of things is in the living

tactility fails us when we seek to grasp what is most important

my generation cries out for change, for hope, for belief is something real

our elders disappoint us and chastise us, and this is how we hang our heads

a lexicon that lasts a thousands years is out of reach

full of expressions that barely express anything

one can refuse almost anything, any day, any pill, any drink

but it’s difficult to shrug off the truth

contamination of thought

being different takes on a whole new meaning

value has been ascribed to our nonconformity

we now watch with our ears, and listen with our mouths

possessing such arrogance of thought

seeing parents’ advice drip from the ears of their progeny

there is a sense of the inevitability of all that we are

more has always been needed that what men have been willing to give

burn these words before reading

there is no blood in them, no life

the triumph of martyrs long gone begs for the screams of fiery syllables