Masterpieces

They warn me against the things I do. I’m only a young, innocent flower after all. Liquor and smoke will do nothing for me, they say...But the problem is that I like it. As the doves cry out that we weren’t made for this life, a raven in the boughs above the liquor house suggests with black eyes that, maybe, we were. Maybe the plant grew here and time caresses the fruit so that we could see. There is such a wild beauty in this blur...where all that is hidden surfaces and the madness of human emotion can finally reveal itself. It is all so impeccably shattered. Society’s rules crumble and desire springs forth like hungry wolves...desire to let it all out. Every grand and powerful emotion that we have been told all of our lives to suppress, to hide, to throw away, is suddenly set free. When the shot glasses clink together, I look into their eyes and hear their breaths to observe for what reason they swallow the fire. Usually it’s to hide the pain and fear. I’m the same. We mix fire with pretty things, the sweet and the bright. It’s our fancy way of smothering the cost of relief...making it not look so bad as it really is. Then the madness of children and the very old…an insanity that we have always balanced carefully between our mind and structure...comes back to us. We laugh because there are great joys in this world and we weep because there are also horrors. We dance and sing, whisper and scream, give and steal. We see each other without the mask that hides us all. I wonder what I look like to you, as I drink captain and breathe marijuana, wearing ripped jeans and high tops. Do you see how fucked up I am? I smoke because I can imagine things that, for a while, come true. I laugh until I am scared out of my mind then I lie in bed unable to sleep and thinking of you. I am released from the pain and expectations and the fact that I am deathly afraid of boys. Do you know how sad and angry and regretful I am? Do you see how much I love? This scene is a spherical work of art...concrete yet never ending. Within the blotches of red covering their burning skin and the blue rain staining their cheeks...within the white flash of their smiles and black bruises and grey vapor and green leaves and the zipper of a silky pink dress coming undone, there’s a story. A hidden message that’s value trumps anything society can offer. As we all break down, the true colors of our beings reveal themselves. We stop hiding. We shine through our mask for whomever is before us at this grand moment… allowing our lives to seep into theirs, sharing that which we have hidden and releasing what we have contained so long...staining them with the color of our lives until each of us becomes a masterpiece. Then we wake up. And it’s all grey again.