The ones who saw the smoke all lived in silence.
They quietly broke bread in cold houses
and only spoke in two places:
boldly, among the four walls of a basement
or carefully, within the domes of their anxious minds.
All hopeful yet alone.
They sit, numb and breathless
with empty eyes and brimming hearts
thinking of the transcience and the fragility
that their tiny lives hold.
Thinking of the rock on which they lounge
spinning and whizzing through
an airless whirlwind and a boundless vaccuum.
Thinking of their speed, abstract and fathomless
all while they sit calmly and still
on their creaky wooden stools.
They walk through vacant streets
with hopeful heads and empty hands
imagining their static minds
traveling through dynamic matter;
they imagine their beings
as single threads of energy
beaming through a bundle of fiber optics
individual photons
woven into one beam of light.
At times, they'd sit and stare at each other,
watching each other's breathe escape into the cold air
counterparts of gender, colleagues of love
They worshiped the twinkles in each other's eyes,
thinking of the shine as far off distant stars
light years away;
a far off union that mirrored the attraction
which magnetized their own two minds;
a potent fusion of two beings,
two complementary elements,
radiant and nuclear,
burning with the desire of closeness.
They took refuge with their imaginations for it was the only tool they had to transfer their residence from the external wasteland of reality to the internal paradise of the mind.
The world had gone to shit so they took shelter under the veil of symbols and abstractions. Every moment that came and every object external to themselves was translatable through metaphor and mystery. Turning simple beauty into blooms of magnificence. Shifting simple fears into monstrous complexities of terror and death.
