by Justin Wetch
I could see a whole new color, it seemed
The primary three, and this new fourth color
That I couldn’t quite pin down, but around you
Drab gray became vibrant summer.
We watched the sunset together again
For the umpteenth time, it didn’t dismay
But when I looked for you, you had disappeared
I had to stop searching as last light faded away.
When I awoke the next morning,
Something had gone terribly wrong.
The sunrise was dull and disappointing
And the birds sang a most discordant song.
When you left, you left a void
In my perspective of the world
Leaving me to see everything
Nasty, distorted, and curled.
It was the same as it had been at the start
Before you taught me to see a new way
But having tasted the finest of life
The old way wouldn’t do, this wasn’t okay.
Like looking at the sun, recovery takes time
And time is a tedious medicine
Looking back, I began to wonder
If your love was ever genuine.
But it was for the best, I’m now quite sure
I learned and experienced new things
And yes, it does sometimes still feel
Like your leaving chopped off my wings…
I used to see a sunset
And marvel at it’s beauty
The sight of the sun dancing down
Was enough for me.
Now I look at a sunset
And nearly smile at its beauty
The sight of the sun dancing down
Is almost enough for me.
LITHIUM
Manic, intense highs
Followed by horrific, terrible lows
Strobing between blinding light
And blind darkness.
This bipolarity encapsulates her love;
Sometimes we are a storybook romance
And sometimes a vendetta of revenge.
Sometimes it feels like even if
Every inch of my skin was touching yours
I still wouldn’t be close enough to you.
And other times even if we were
On opposite ends of the globe
I would still feel too close to you.
Have you ever wanted to love someone so powerfully
So desperately, so obsessively
That they destroy who you are as a person?
That the fabric of your life is burned to a crisp
by the unending intensity of it all…
Those are the highs.
In those times, her love spreads a silly stuporous smile
Across my canvas of a face
And I couldn’t be higher.
But when you go too high, you run out of Oxygen.
Love gives the best of highs
But also the worst of hangovers.
When vision blurs
And indecision surges
It’s like looking into the black abyss of space
From the surface of the sun
The sheer light behind you
Masks the stars ahead
And everything is blackness.
Even simple things are joyless
And our love
Which once lit up every corner of the universe
Now barely keeps dying embers aglow.
To treat this bipolarity, the doctors prescribed Lithium.
Lithium is a woman of steady goodness
She knows nothing of mountains or valleys
Only flat, endless plains
Which little effort is required to move through
But there are no captivating views.
My first love wore vibrant colors at times
And funeral dresses at others
Lithium wears only a calming grey
And knows nothing of frowns
Only a perpetual smile.
She is always calm
And would never suggest silly things
Like cliff diving or random midnight drives…
Our calendars are planned and always followed through
And she always thinks three steps ahead.
Every Sunday after church
We eat at the same cafe
She orders the same salad and black coffee
And I order a trip down memory lane
To a time with my first love
When I was so caught up in her
That I forgot to eat for two days…
She talks of marriage now
We go so well together, she says,
And we never, ever clash!
We never make offensive jokes
Or improvise our lines
But hey, we’re happy, aren’t we?
Aren’t we?
So why do I want to go off my meds?
When Lithium leaves her night light on
—she can never sleep without it, she says—
I only long for darkness.
What is this sickness within me
That longs to be burnt to ashes by a fierce passion
And hates this peace?
This dreadful, meaningless, horrible, good calmness.
So in the middle of the night
I awaken in a cold sweat
And without a plan, leaving everything behind
I flee to a foreign city
Where I don’t even speak the language
Where the doctors don’t know my name
Where the Lithium will soon wear off
And I will soon be free again.
I don’t want safety or guarantees—
I want a life worth living.
I want to jump off a skyscraper
And fashion a parachute on the way down
Out of my fears and trepidations
Because sometimes survival
Isn’t the most important thing
And surviving
Isn’t the same as living.
With arms opened wide I await
The oncoming storm
That wonderful, violent, colorful storm
It may destroy every particle of me
But at least I’ll feel alive and free.
Perhaps these are the words
Of someone who learned to love passionately;
Or perhaps these are the last words
Of a junkie who couldn’t get high enough.
section three
life
SECTION III: LIFE
CONTENTS:
Dust On This Piano
Empty Wealth
Retirement
Dreaming
Music Theory (Of Life)
As Joy Dwindles With The years
Hiding From Silence
Clearing The Scoreboard
Frostbite
Dietary Considerations
Monuments of Ink
Monuments of Pixels & Light
Newton’s Third Law of Emotion
Life Is Profoundly Sad
Discovering Mental Injuries
Postmodern Angst
Midnight
Goodbye
The Wave
A Man in the Rain
What a beautiful, relentlessly haunting thing; the space between hope and reality.
DUST ON THIS PIANO
In the attic of this old house,
Up the creaky, torn carpet stairs;
I draw open the curtains;
Light permeates the air.
My eyes squint as the sun
Announces its presence with a shout.
Here, packed away in cardboard boxes;
Are dreams that never panned out.
Dust settles in the sun’s rays
Calmly on a mute piano
A paintbrush’s tip lies dried up
No mark on this canvas but shadow.
A paper lies on an old wooden desk
And on it, a pencil with broken lead.
A glass of lukewarm water sits
Next to half a piece of rotted bread.
I have to ask, what happened here?
With a teardrop-stained mirror, broken;
So much wasted potential--
A door locked, but left open.
Perhaps here I see the crime scene
Where someone was given a toxin
Or suffocated until all they had
To breathe with was oxygen.
I see the seat where Mozart was killed
Crushed by this pile of textbooks.
And here, DaVinci bled to death
Cut by this stack of bills, it looks.
So, why this massacre of genius?
Perhaps under so much pressure
Only a cog in the machine is made
Not always some diamond treasure.
It is such a pity how some people
Are dead long before their hearts stop beating.
This old man died at twenty-five
When life told him to stop dreaming.
Perhaps it is not too late for me
To escape this endless loop
Maybe those who live past death
Are the ones who continued to hope.
I wipe the dust off this piano
Watch it flee away, escaping
As I push down on this untuned key
I feel a life worth living awaiting.
EMPTY WEALTH
Ten thousand dollar suit
Two thousand dollar shoes
Boasting of immense wealth
But never knowing what’s true.
Matching Rolex watches
Not happy after all
Bought a huge new mansion
With gold-plated walls.
A garage full of Lamborghinis
Can’t fill an empty heart
Sometimes even the rich
Wish for a fresh start.
A pocket full of cash
Nothing left to spend it on
Already bought the world
Done everything that's wrong.
People say they’re his friend
But how could he ever be sure?
When you leave a trail of dollar bills
You can’t be sure your loves are pure.
What use is it, really
To take your millions to the grave
When instead of living life
You've become your own slave?
This is the life of a millionaire
A glass so full it's empty
A hole that can't be filled
By a new Mercedes or a Bentley.
Nothing he can't have
Except for what he wants
A shadow of the real thing
A phantom desire still haunts
He'd willingly go poor
Just to have a real friend;
You can have the whole world,
But your world will have to end.
We believe that more is better
But sometimes less is more
Sometimes endless wealth is empty
A pot of gold with a trap door.
Because if you've gained everything
It becomes its own prison walls
Don't lose what matters most
To get what doesn't matter at all.
RETIREMENT
They give us eighteen years
To figure out how to spend our lives;
We’re pushed towards high-paying careers
At the cost of letting our dreams die.
They say it’ll all be worth it
When you finally get to retire
When you run out of things
To shoot for, to aspire.
Is it really worth it
To spend all these years
Navigating a maze of mirrors
Building someone else’s empire
Just so that our last decade
When our bodies have already decayed
Will at last be peaceful?
Let us hold a funeral for happiness
Let us mourn the death of joy
Crunching corporate numbers all day
Darkens our inner light ‘till it’s destroyed.
Does it have to be this way?
Is this the only available path?
It’s all so confusing and nonsensical
Like those formulas in math.
I want my life to be more
Than a dollar figure amount
Or the statistics in my bank account;
I want to live a life
Where retirement isn’t necessary,
Where all my years are satisfactory.
I won’t live for life’s last decade.
DREAMING
I remember sitting in bed, as a child
looking up at the ceiling
I couldn’t sleep, of course,
And so set about to thinking
I wondered, what are dreams made of?
Are they stardust and galaxies?
Are they the tendrils of existence
Reaching inwards from eternity?
I didn’t know, and really, still don’t.
All I knew and know is what it’s like
When reality loses its hardened grasp
On perception, as dullness begins to die
As the body begins to be motionless
And the truth comes out as we lie
Silently for hours, flying into that
Far away, beautiful landscape beyond here.
Dreaming with eyes closed to the world
But this is no inhibition to seeing
A world somehow beyond this one
Frail, crumbling, loose, and fleeting;
An oddball splattering of paints
Mixed from real life and something else,
They ooze together on this canvas and so die
To come alive in some other realm.
Light whirls in eight-dimensional streams
Darkness is contained in a crystal hidden
Behind our eyes to protect our innermost dreams
From the ease of destruction of all new things;
Dreams flutter and leave behind a trace
As eyes match the motion and slowly open—
Briefly, magic and Earth are both in place;
I lament the sadness of being awoken.
MUSIC THEORY (OF LIFE)
Life is a decrescendo until death
With many flats
And few rests
Ending in a full stop
Modulating into madness
Suspension into sadness
Vibrato relieving the flatness
Moonlit sonata against the blackness
Chords of misery
Triads of despair
Bars of brokenness
Coalescing in crescendos
Motifs of mystery
Transposing terribly
Into dark dissonance
Whole notes of pain
Boredom and darkness
Half notes of light
Flirting and romance
Quarter notes of peace
Quiet and simplicity
What is life, if not a song
Made of imperfect melodies
And it ends before too long
With cruelty in great quantity
But perhaps it's not all dark
Nor does light come without energy
Perhaps perspectives make their mark
And put dissonance into harmony.
AS JOY DWINDLES WITH THE YEARS
Why do the holidays
Lose their charm over the years?
Why does Christmas
Not seem like Christmas anymore?
These special days
Lose their magic
With the passing of time.
It flows from us
Betraying us
For the next generation.
&nbs
p; I envy the sparkle
In their young eyes
As they are still enchanted
By fairies, santa, and
A host of joyful lies.
I recall the way
A present used to feel
Like a box of endless mystery
In my hands;
My own portal
To a world
Of infinite possibility
Of infinite amazement.
Now I get things I need
Instead of fuel for the imagination;
—Legos used to call my mind
To hours of new adventures
Building spaceships and skyscrapers
Rising high above that stained carpet
Into the cosmos above
Beyond mere reality—
Now here’s some flavored coffee
To work harder with
And watch the hours pass by
Ever faster and faster.
What is it about growing older
That bites venomously
Into the neck of hope?
As joy dwindles with the years
I wistfully recall
When the christmas tree
Looked ten feet tall
And the presents under it
Seemed endless
And more
Than mere wrapping paper.
Kiss goodbye to wonder, once so near;
Must joy dwindle so with the years?
HIDING FROM SILENCE
Blaring loud music
Flipping through channels
Insanity, excuse it
Anything to avoid silence
Who’s dating who?
Celebrities and gossip
Like animals at a zoo
We are so predictable.
Distraction after distraction
To keep real thoughts away
Lulling ourselves into inaction
We talk so much yet we have nothing to say.
Mathematical formulas
couldn’t quantify the feeling
The inevitability of death
And the slowness of mental healing.
We hide from silence
For it forces us to think
Where our lives are going
and what makes us distinct.
So stop hiding from silence
Introspection is no evil thing
Listen to your heart and self
Silence is good, though it stings.
CLEARING THE SCOREBOARD
It’s all too easy to start keeping score
Of those who hurt you, and do you wrong
It’s so easy to say someone owes you
To hold a grudge for ever so long.
These scoreboards are heavy and hard
To carry around on your back
It’s such a powerful inner monster
Who sees every slight as an attack.
It sounds simple, but is harder than it looks