Monday, July 14, 2008

Quarters

There's a greatness in the air outside, a greatness only unsuccessfully copied inside by cooling and heating systems. The smell of the air out here gets stuck on your face, pours into your lungs and awaits the arrival to the cranium.
The same could go for beauty, masked by make-up and cologne, its intentions to actually beautify.
The same could go for love and its romanticized imprint on persons in love, thought to be the best of all, the worst of all.


What is that chirping? Is it the birds, the crickets, the spiders?
Should I break a finger off to slap it with? If I do, would the chirper even be baited by it, killed by it, quieted by it?
Should I scream, or would he mock me? If I scream will I scare him? Or does he, Chirper, encounter far more frights than my vocal chords?
It isn't like I want to break a finger off or scream.
It isn't as if I want to be outside to experience the outside air drowning my lungs and the smog clogging the pores of my body and seeping into my brain. It isn't even as if I want this pen and this ridiculous paper and to call it beautiful or ugly or hopeless or wonderful or wretched.
It's just that if I were inside, I'd run. I'd run until I couldn't find my way back. I'd run until my ligaments broke like rubber bands and my eyes couldn't see five feet ahead. I'd run until I couldn't hear trains spewing in the air and until my feet crusted over and were padded with dead skin.
I'd run until the air felt different and the water tasted different and the people looked different and until God spoke in different pitch. I'd run until there was no such thing as running, and no one would know how to put me to a stop. I'd run until there were no breaks, no motors, no ink on paper, no paper holding ink, no leather belts holding up your pants, no ties around your neck, no baby occupying your womb, no ice cream cone in your hand, no IV in your arm, no knife to your neck, no bomb in a building, no head-on collision, no bone-breaking falls.
I'd run until the grass was evaporated and the air outside couldn't fill your lungs with such potential.