In My Mind's Eye

Psychedelic Nihilism

If you're quiet you can hear them smiling,

In between the sounds of dying.

All the overdosing, crying.

I only turn to God when the world around turns black,

And all the flashing lights fade from purple to orange to nothingness,

And all the stockbrokers choke on the money they swallow,

And all the anarchists' veins convulse, full of Freedom and its sister Death.

If I squint you look like money on a seaside, space-bound drug cartel ship,

Flowers in your hair,

And yet they don't call your every breath an attempted suicide.

If I'm quiet I hear them mumbling, shaking,

Voices berating,

The systems of tyranny and helplessness that result,

From liberty after midnight strikes,

Immobilized, succumbing to insanity on a hell-bound train on a dead-end track,

And yet they don't call their every day another waking crisis.

Life is the universe's most elaborate optical illusion.

I can feel the world spinning in my head,

Stirring oceans, blending lies with truth,

Rocking a spectrum of ultraviolet inside my sun-scorched mind.

This melting pot is long past boiling,

And I didn't see it coming this time.

The only meaning to life is to take up as little space as possible,

And die without defiance.

The only meaning to life is to absorb the flickering,

Sparkling fragments of memory that dance across the ballroom of your bleeding mind,

Spinning pinwheels of rainbow declarations,

Convene like fireflies around my dizzy eyes.

To make oneself into a work of abstract art,

An alluring masterpiece of human existence,

Is the most admirable glory one can achieve.

Is this part of an artist's life cycle?

Have I left my puppet's strings behind?

Lord, deliver me from this torturous cycle, tearing me apart,

Give me the strength to let my mind eclipse the worry in my heart.