Stream of Consciousness

by Diehsarr

Moments
No. Not the physics: the living.
I want to capture this moment, this time, this place,
But how do I do it?
And now it’s gone. It just slipped through my fingers.
I want it back.
It feels like the universe just flew through my mind.
And I’m so caught up in my moment that I’m trying to make it fit everyone else’s.
I stare for five minutes at a spider web, very complex in its synthesis.
There’s something caught in it and it’s shaped like a hammock.
It makes me wonder
Why I hate the feel of it against my fingers; how it wraps itself around my touch,
But if I were that small, I would feel entombed.
Not weighed down under a pile of soil and excrement,
But warm and cocooned.
The doors open and a man is staring at me.
I’ve seen him before. This same place, different vehicle, and he was eating soup.
He gets what he wants, the money and leaves.
Back in the store, I order and want to take a seat
But there are two men, one clean-shaven, the other …well, not.
Four seats, no space. Sprawled like the typical person with a penis.
I say “It would be nice if I could sit down.”
The solemnity disappears;
Smiles replace it.
I say thank you and claim my prize.
I notice a Chinese woman notice the scene,
And I hope she remembers it.
Driving again.
White house, blue house, white house, white house, blue house, peach house?
I wonder.
I want to know
If there is another body with the same thought process.
If this
Is what everyone else sees when they see what I see.
If this
Is how all the great writers and artists felt when they saw life,
Through a window,
Watching from a darkened street.
Were they analysing the scene, or were they living it?
Better yet, is this living it?
Blink. Blink. Blink. Blink. Blink. Blink.
It annoys me seeing it. It annoys me writing it.
I see sunlight making the windows of the building haze,
Stretching a world of light, suspended midair and
I change the picture in my mind’s eye.
I’m small, vulnerable and oh so happy.
I stand in a circular room
And look up to see streaming sunlight and black birds,
Not blackbirds: the unidentifiable ones flitting around.
I don’t want to change, but already I have
For they remind me of the millions of thoughts chasing through my head,
Never tangled, because they are moving too fast,
But solid in the middle and narrow at the ends
All unfinished, unfulfilled, unrealized
And I can’t string them together.
The sky darkens
And people bump the car. The car beeps.
I am mildly annoyed.
People bump the car. The car beeps.
I am mildly annoyed.
People bump the car. The car beeps. Person says “shut up”.
And I am placated by the toothy grin exposed with the realisation that said car
Contains a living being.
So many moments.
Time should be measured by them
Except they could never be measured,
For one is a thousand.
It’s just another idea that would never work.

Written in 2008.

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