Enlightenment (illusion?)

In your right jean pocket you have three quarters, a lighter, and a toothpick for your dead, black teeth. In your left pocket you have a hole. You are left handed and you use this hole to touch yourself. Really, its quite uplifting being able to make yourself feel so good. Independence has always been your goal.

It stands to reason that those jeans are your favorite pants seeing as how they are your only pants. Ripped and stained, they look a bit like your soul. Try not to think about how this thought reminds you of that day (so long ago). A whole lifetime ago. Your hands twitch; you try not to glance at the green eyes of the middle-aged mother sitting next to you. Everything can be a reminder if you let it. If you don’t let go. Forget that her eyes had been brown not green like the mother’s.

It’s happening… you’re letting it.

“Its not that I didn’t enjoy the past few months,” she had said. So now you’re back, once again. Living in your head. Re-watching these same tired mind movies. There is no way this is healthy. “Really, its just that I didn’t love the past few months. You’re a nice guy, you really are, but we both know this can’t work out.” Forget that she was leaving you and that you might just have deserved it. Remember only the convenient as you laugh and tell yourself that you two were a match made in hell. Enough twisted words or left out parts and you can always paint yourself the victim.

You told her that she was wrong about one thing– everyone in this restaurant, in this world, none of them understands. Go ahead; the playful hollers of the kids you are watching at this park can remind you of what you yelled at her. Everything is a reminder, remember?

“Nice guy?” you asked her. (Indignation had been written on your forehead). You're wrong. I’m not. Far from it. You said all of this. Its convenient to remember you had been whispering. Other patrons that morning claim you were yelling. A disturbance. They didn’t appreciate you pouring hot coffee on your arm as you stared at her. Some saw you point at your new burn and ask her if she saw it, if she realizes that this makes you a man, a hero. You told her you were not a good guy, far from pure. You were powerful. That James Bond isn’t a nice guy. That she means nothing to you and is just a body. (Genius was written on your forehead.)

The little boy at the table next to you– that twitchy little kid with caricature ears? He went home that night and asked his daddy if it was true what you had said, that men must be strong and that nice is a useless weakness. You know that no one that morning understood what you gained by standing on your booth while clutching your newly injured forearm and whispering (yelling?).

“Do you see this burn? This transcends intelligence, humor, or thought. This makes me Achilles. I must be remembered. Enough pride and you need no one else. Nice is weak.”

They didn’t get it. They called it self-mutilation. You know it was really a self-realization. Your shining moment. Someone in a white coat and generic plastic name tag called it a mental breakdown. There were pills. You took them. You threw them up. The back of your throat is scarred from the wounds of your struggle (stomach acid?). Please, just rest easy. (Living martyr is written on your forehead.)

The feel of a quarter in your right hand brings you back to reality. The feel is something constant is reassuring. Or maybe not. It means some things never change. You feel around a bit more and mentally add lint to the inventory of your right pocket. Dirt seems all you have. The mother on your right has been slowly retreating away from you this whole time. People fear what they can never become.

Don’t think about how there is a filthy, low class bum sitting in a park watching little boys and little girls slide and laugh and cry and push and hold hands and monkey-bar and carelessly enjoy breathing. Don’t thing about how this man is you. How could you have evolved (degenerated?) into this? Long ago you stopped trying to talk to the kids. The mothers swarm like bees if you do. It’s not like you want to hurt them or touch them like the bees think. Really you just want to warn them. To tell them things their parents don’t even know. (Messenger is written on your forehead.)

And this is what the bee’s children should know (what they would know if suppression of the truth wasn’t the national pastime)…
Life is a broken record
A twirling merry-go-round
A tired joke
Late night re-runs of some old as dirt game show
It is metaphor piled upon metaphor
And those little kids, they will live it. Until they grow sick from the smell of stagnate dreams. Everything about her had been a stagnate dream. Like the photocopied love making and recycled conversations (arguments?).

And that mother, she doesn’t try to hide her sigh of relief as you get up to leave. That’s not carbon dioxide escaping through her lips. It’s oppression. Breathe in what will someday end you. What already has.

Throughout history, dictators and regimes and governments have suppressed or murdered or hidden the educated, the free thinkers. One thought can topple a tyrant. You are simply caught up in the repetition of history, of mistakes.

No one is listening…

This is due to their ignorance. This is due to the fact that your life is some stage play, and you have been cast as the oppressed. Forget applause or money. Forget public approval. You are your own trophy case. Every crack in your lip and needle mark in your arm- they are your Oscars. (Persecuted genius is written on your forehead.)

It’s alright that everyone hates you.

Because everyone hates a showoff.