The Platinum Chord

i. …and I’m Feline Good

Beneath twilight’s dusty speckled sky
sits a lonely figure cut against a streetlight’s goading shine.
A version of Nosferatu more laughable than fearful
passing time with Jack Frost and his infinitesimal army,
blowing smoke rings from his near-to-the-filter cigarette.
He flicks it away into bushes, which ignite
and burn this whole sorry world to ash.

A black cat meanders, pauses, meanders some more,
then rushes into a field for a mouse.
A brief company, he thinks, momentarily blinded by hope,
a flash in the pan extinguished as hastily as bad memories
flitting around his head like a masquerading ballerina
trying to ensnare him in her overpowering elegance and beauty.

He is a passé style of man, once lauded, now forgotten
in the trends of a brand new generation of idiots and losers
all harbouring ambitions lesser than a mosquito’s ability to recite Nietzsche.
But, as with all things, he has a saving grace;
the platinum chord on his gold guitar,
the wingèd nymph in his glaucoma-riddled mind’s eye,
the fruit of the Tree never touched by Man.
He has a saving grace,
the man he is not which will surely be.

ii. …Because it Fell From the Sky

We are nocturnal or else we would not find wonder in the stars
or gaze at a full moon and imagine how it would feel to look back,
to see the tiny blue marble whistling across the dark sky.
We are diurnal or else we would not appreciate colour
or walk beneath the bellowing sun hand-in-hand with Love,
and feel that everything fits perfectly in our own little worlds.
We are cathemeral or else we would be born blind and die sad.

This is the thought train that arrived in his terminal
and he began thinking where it could have possibly come from.
It fell from the sky,
God’s honest truth and His worst curse,
because it fell from the sky.

iii. …Well, He’s Only Human After All

He stands up, walks a few yards, then sits back down on a stone wall,
overgrown with moss and colonised with families of fungi.
Gypsies have carved rudimentary signs into the stonework,
crumbling and eroding until eventually nothing will exist
and no one who passes by in the future will ever know
that this figure of black glass ever sat there and wondered of existence.

He is human, and as such, he is prone to dilemmas everyone faces,
such is the gift of sentience, that great quarrelsome ability.
He knows he will die, so he imagines it, as you do too.
Of course, he only ever thinks of the pain he will suffer,
because with sentience comes selfishness, a farcical attribute we all need.
He is afraid of change, and death is the greatest change of all.
Well, he’s only human after all.

He lights another cigarette, and another five minutes passes by silently,
harbouring death’s stench and bloodlust, although he feels the slightest of breezes
gently kiss the side of his neck and the chill runs down his spine.
A shiver, slight, elegant, cruises through his body and he stands up,
terrified of nature, of the cold and the dark and the sky.
He runs and runs until he can run no longer.
He has no idea where he is.

He is lost, and a parable arises but other thoughts vanquish it.
It has been proven that humans, with no object of reference,
will walk in complete circles when hopelessly lost.
Sometimes the diameters of those circles are just a couple dozen metres.
In the field he is standing in, he has walked less than fifty paces,
having unknowingly completed a full circle and more.
He’ll find his way eventually, but how he gets there is unimportant.

iv. …But If He Doesn’t Wake Up, What Then?

Four in the morning is the time he eventually fell asleep,
after wandering in the dark, alone, afraid, for three hours,
listing all the things he wants to do in his life,
not knowing he will accomplish only one of those,
that when death eventually comes, it be painless.
He might die tonight, who knows. I am no seer.
But if he doesn’t wake up, what then?

Then I will find someone else to follow,
someone who is so despairingly depressed
that the pull of his or her anorexic ego will draw me in,
like a planet orbiting too closely around its parent star.
Then I will be able to create another story like this,
one with new ideas on life and death,
with different views of the sky at night and the clouds in day.
If he doesn’t wake up, I will be lost, if just for a little while.

v. …and Don’t Look Behind You

…for you will not see me melt into the air.