Fire

The fire burns, and I'm covered in plastic, and I spin and spin. The economy, the environment, atoms, evolution, so much to figure out. But it's all easy to figure out compared to these fires inside me that burn, burn, burn. Cognitive dissonance tears at my soul, day and night, as I trudge through this life, trying to figure it out.

Love, pain, cancer, and the desperation to believe religious lies, that promise to make things better, but never really do.

To quench the fire is to smother the soul, yet the fire burns on and destroys. Paper cups and straws, and landfills packed with garbage, and people who don't recycle, and reliance on the Taker System. Oh, how I kill, and what I kill will one day kill me.

But then the fire burns. The intense joy that turns to pain. The intense confusion. The joy of having it all, but really having nothing. The joy of deception, of illusion.

In the distance I see the shadows on the horizon, as my mind dances aimlessly about in my skull. Trying to figure it all out, but never able to. To hear the preachers scream and the philosophers ponder, and the teachers lecturing, and the moms screaming at their children. Everyone dances to a beat but no one recognizes the song.

And then there's that fire. That fire that wants to make the phone ring. That fire that makes you see what you can't see, that makes you want to have what you can never have, that makes you want to be with what you can never be with.

The timbers fall and Mother America grasps for straws as she slowly dies, and all this time I hold on to this misconception that it is better to only live for the present than to think about the future.

Burn, fire, burn. But what makes you burn? What fuels your flame? What fuels me? I do not know, and I cannot explain these feelings inside. My heart consumes my spirit, which consumes my soul. And my mind sits idly by, unable to control the powerful forces within.

Todd