Placebo

ARC

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the mind and soul travel

out into worlds of colors unreal

languages without sound

these dreams of dreams

please lose myself, dammit

where is my nirvana

and why does it keep me waiting,

just take me to the blackness of space

where there is no one but voices, or not even that,

the stars and dust of eons

and no one to hear you scream or so they say;

Bradbury wrote endlessly of Mars and space

where calmness sets in among stars and light until you die,

why not travel away

destination: anywhere

let me soar into nothingness

and dissolve into the atoms that have made this fucked-up world,

where is the mind

if it isn’t just flesh and blood and tissue

not just a functional collection of nerves

but an awareness not yet fully explored

until someone crucified a man for his love of all

and now after centuries where has he gone

people worship him

and read passages from books about sin and salvation

but is that what he really wanted;

the mind is not a soul

so where does it all go

when you lie there asleep

or on a table under the knife

trying not to breathe for fear of interrupting

that process which keeps you sane,

yes, bring out the pills, the pins and needles

I am an experiment

see me pretend to be well

while you talk in offices, take notes and speculate on my life

because of some diploma on the wall, how special;

what is sanity but a placebo of the senses,

the definition of normal,

while the world is suffocating...

do something, you idiot!

you scribe scribbling in purple ink,

people are dying now!

and still you sit as though the words matter;

maybe they do, but only to her

as she drops tears

while the cars and trees keep moving to no answer

in the night, air is still and quiet

until someone breathes and life begins again

while another ends;

is life a circle, a line,

was Plato correct in that we are all slaves

to a conspiracy of gods who fool us into this reality

this brutal nonexistent magic trick of biology and religion

all the things we pretend to know

while the sky has always been blue

and maybe that isn’t the point