Looking Up

The sands of time shift swiftly while swirling slowly at the exact same time, and for a single moment everything in

The world is great and gold and glittering in the watery light emitted by the pale sun overhead. Thoughts turn into stars that fly down rivers of night, and the snakes at the edges of the astral boat coil and twist like living rope as the

Nautical instruments point to the north, and the horse of light starts to make his own laborious journey again and

Again across the sky.

Can anybody see me, can anybody hear me, or am I just

Another bit of dust in the road that stretches in to the distance

Stargazers stare through telescopes mounted on rooftops

At the top of the world

Differing indifference looks on

The stars don’t know why we look up

Why do we look up

A thousand paper cranes float down sparkling rivers that are made of blue veins that reflect the fractured moonlight.

It sparkles across the crashing ocean, smashing the white iridescence into a thousand million pieces like a small toy

That a careless girl dropped. The windup child performs for her audience, jerky movements reminiscent of a

Puppet twisting and dancing on someone else’s strings. Yes sir, no sir, three bags full sir, smile and wave and pretend

That you are having fun

Sitting in a dingy old elevator, hiding from the renovators with their clipboards who want to knock my house down.

Standing by the fork in the road, driving through the dawning light next to a cattle truck that warns of a wide load.

Dancing in the dark until the sun comes up, illuminated by the strobe lights that slow down movements and make

The entire world seem like a chaotic amalgam of equations and positives and negatives that never really fall neatly

Into place, no matter how hard I try.

You can come out from under the covers now, the apocalypse has already happened. Dodge the bullets spat out from the mouth of your manic boss, smile through the luggage under your eyes and laugh at your chronic insomnia.

Traffic lights and all-nighters and cigarette lighters and a million other things that glow in the dark, have they actually

Forgotten that some of us need our beauty sleep to meet expectations of owl-eyed wide awakedness, chuck a few

Pills down, there you go

Tin man, scare crow, cowardly lion, black bow, and running along the yellow brick road the little dog Toto follows the

The monkey crows and the ruby red shoes that dance in the snow, that can click together and point the way home

Little legs running around the bend, is this where the story ends, or will Dorothy lend those damn shoes to someone
Else who’s lost their way? Smile and wave now, here come the cameras, your life is just one big performance for an Audience of idiots.

Foreign cities with unpronounceable names, paper aeroplanes become jet planes as you fly on a business trip

Overseas, over the seas, don’t forget to eat your peas, those greens can’t go to waste! Numbers and letters all

Swirling together into an impossible knot that refuses to be untied, even if you tried to chop it in half with a sword I

Doubt that the butter knives we use nowadays would even make a dent in the corded horsehair. Is it genetic, is it sympathetic, or are we all just pathetic?

Falling asleep, falling in deep, dream in the wasteland of everlasting sleep, you have about four hours until the alarm

Will wake you up, so enjoy it while you can. Nobody wants to be afraid, but it seems to be to me just the way that

We are made – it’s why, in the dust beside the graves, we lay small devices to remind the resting dead that

Tomorrow is another (nine to five) day, thankyou Scarlet O’Hara! It’s how we’ve been bred, it’s in our heads, and it just won’t go away…

Can anybody see me, can anybody hear me, or am I just

Another speck of rust on the ever turning cogs of mankind’s machinery

Steam and smoke and fire that belches from the rooftops

At the top of the world

Differing indifference looks on

The stars don’t know why we look up

Why do we look up?