The Side Effects of Waiting for the End of the World- A Poem

I think I saw the world pass by on what I thought was a pier or distant hill

With one eye shut and the other opened wide to the detriment

Of every dream, every hope, every moment lasting until

It closed like a lost lucky coin that’s fallen

Into a fountain

Into a void

Into the chasms vast of our last hopes now past

A silver dollar dulled by the wish of a star burnt out.

There were so many truths that gleamed like dew drops

From the distant peak on which I balanced

Granite rubbed smooth by the passage of time

In what was either abuse or a caress

And as I stood looking down

Too much of a fool to be profound

I saw what my life could’ve been

And I fell from my mountain, tumbling down like half-forgotten

Dreams that were dreamt as a child long ago.

And as I slid and stumbled

As the avalanche of the waiting world did rumble

I saw the moments of was and might slowly pass me by

It was almost as if they were waiting

Paused in time debating

Whether or not I had any right to see what might have been

But in their hesitance I saw the flickers and a snowflake’s life

That stands eternal only until the thaw

And every movie screen shutter that shuddered with truths now uttered

Said or showed the very same thing

That who I’d wanted to be hadn’t mattered

That the dreams like glass had shattered

Beneath the weight of the man I’d been and been too afraid to be.

I saw as I fell with the crumbling stone

Down the cliffside of every bit of progress I’d made

The time that I’d spent making friendships now vacant

Like an open space in an empty parking lot

And the memories made that even now must decay

Because even the best things in life are sewn with time

And the stitching is ripping

The fabric is failing

And as I fell I saw each loved one of the past fade away

Left as they were, their footholds so sure

Peering down as even a fall can leave someone behind

And I wish I had waved

I thought perhaps I might say

Goodbye and thank you for what you have done

To get me this far

To the top of a mountain, a bar,

That only I ever thought might be there

But I’ve never been good at the kind of thing and have lingered

Just once long ago

So I fell in my silence and struck stone after stone with defiance

That those on the slopes wouldn’t know

How much it all hurt, the plummet, the process

Of failing and falling to become something new.

And even now I still hope

Approaching the ground growing close

That I might learn to glide even if it’s ‘just in time’

Because what might be is a mystery

It looks like jagged rocks and a prairie plain

As it looms and shadows like a predator hunting prey

And I suppose that it might be, that even hope can be frightening

That the fall holds more fear than the climb

But the funniest thing is that every thought and hope and dream doesn’t matter

It doesn’t comfort

It doesn’t hold

The embrace and the safety of all that is known

It’s the exhilaration of letting go of what might’ve been.

It’s the fall. It’s the progress. It’s the hope that feels like distress

Faced with eyes closed tight and arms spread out wide

Letting go of who I never was,

Goodbye, my lie of life once lived

Goodbye, my towering home

I feel it all

It’s so very close

There is no longer a mountain

And I’m at peace with the rush of the wind.