By The Book

By the Book
2-23-10

A young boy sat in a church pew
Amidst friend and foe alike
Listening to the preacher ramble
He felt genuinely secure
High on the Opium of People.

A young girl was carried to
The hospital, soaking wet
And frostbite on her fingers.
Her face was pale and
Her knees were shaking
As a young boy laid her down
Gently on the doctor's stretcher
His face was dry with tears
And he grimaced
As she attempted a faint smile.

Once again sat the mere schoolboy
Frightened in the waiting room
Shaking hands clutching a single
Passage from his worn bible
He felt so empty, so cold
As much if not more
As the young girl fighting
Off a storm of pneumonia
But he firmly believed
It would be alright
His sense of reality diminished
As his sanity finally went
Nothing more then a moaning child
Who couldn't bear to comprehend
The near future- instead
He took another dose
Of the Opium of People.

As the now older boy sat down his pen
Amazed at his account of such
Fictious reality, he never took
Another dose of that lethal drug
As god fled his life
Or as far as he cared to foresee
So did th Opium of People.

That little girl died tonight
As well as yesterday
And assuredly tomorrow
Those final moments of
Such a fictious reality
Etched into his mind
Cutting deeper than any truth
For, in all and in total,
It was the truth..
Or as much a truth as
He cared to comprehend.
Just the face of a lost life
He couldn't bear to recall
So instead the boy
Kept himself comfortable with
His own words, poetry-
Words of death whose only meaning
Was to preserve whatever
Life was left.
Writing it had to be,
Nothing else was strong enough
For never again would he indulge
On the Opium of People.

* * *

The boy laid in his bed
On his side, arms clenching a pillow
The same as every night-
He can't bear change.
And in clinging to the past
Drifting through the present
Careless of his future.
He prays to deafened ears
Every night before falling to
An exhausted sleep
That tonight, perhaps,
May be his last-
Truly a poem worth writing.
He cared not for the outcome
Of whatever outcome lay ahead
Brandishing whatever mask
Played along to his enjoyment
Found amusement in how
The minds of others worked
So oblivious to an evergrowing
Perfectly inconspicuous lie,
He enjoyed seeing the bigger picture,
Or so I thought. . .

The old woman was taken to a hospital
She couldn't care for herself
At least not anymore.
Her lovers brought her there
As they watched her die inside
Their shaking hands clutching
At whatever made sense,
The foolish family members
High on the Opium of People.

The boy watched it all
Though from a third perspective
Intrigued at the workings of
The minds of people.
Grandma would die,
That was obvious
But it was a well deserved rest
She was ready to go
Sore all over
Alone in this world.
It was no longer a matter of if
Or a matter of how
Simply a matter of when-
The thought of life and death
So close in our befuddled reality
The thought made him ponder.

Life is like a novel, they say
Our life is lived in chapters
Moments becoming forever
Forever becoming mere seconds.
Though we are not all writers
We write our own story
And the writers among us
Use their story to create
Miniature stories, inspiring
Leagues of people, whether they realize it or not. An instant becomes forever.

And that very same boy
Was lying in his bed
Arms clenched around a pillow
The same as every night
When he got the news.
The woman had pneumonia-
Dying ever so slowly
Her life measured in weeks
Or days
Hours
Minutes
Seconds..
Instants, forever.

And as the elder succumbed
To her tiredness, fell asleep
A dream she'd dream forever..
The daughter fell apart
Perhaps she will become introverted
Perhaps she will purge herself
Of the Opium of People
Perhaps she to will fall asleep tonight
And never wake up,
And what about the the rest.
Her husband
Their children
Their grandchildren?

An utter reality revealed itself
To the fascinated, curious boy..
It was happening exactly as he wrote
His fictious reality and
Emotional scalpal
Becoming true..
The boy waited it out
Needed all the answers
He was once so sure of
As he watched his story unfold
Right before his very eyes-
Word for word, by the book
Differant characters, without a title
But a copy, none the less..
The thought intrigued the boy
As the idea revealed itself to him
At why he could never before
Write the ending.


***credit to Karl Marx for his 'opium of the people' quote***