How easily I find myself slipping into melancholy
A steely grey overtone
permeates my innermost workings,
the cracks in my brain ooze wistfulness
when pressed.
Even when things are going well
the sun can be shining
and still
it’s like a London fog descends upon my essence
and I find myself floating through the world
to the tune of a cello concerto in B minor.
I hear Pale Blue Eyes
faintly from someone’s car
as they make a smooth left turn.
Is it sadness
or is it the burden of being so deeply acquainted
with the naked, raw humanness inside us all?
It’s a kind of nostalgia for the soul,
a never ending race run backward
that can never be won.
Sometimes it manifests as a kind of Morrissey pride
a middle finger to the world
black leather paired with a pinch of brooding.
But most of the time
the door is open
it leads deeper
streams of foreboding
turn into oceans of chagrin.
If I’m not careful
an afternoon of dappled sun
and steel drums in the park
can turn into a slow but steady sinking
a vagueness that pulls me back into the void
so stealthily
that I don’t even know that I’m drowning.
And I can be standing in a crowded room
and still feel the prickling of loneliness
an exhausting familiarity
blanketing my limbs like goosebumps.
And sometimes I’m so deep in this haze
the whole world filled to the brim
with the specific feeling of ennui
evoked by
Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want.
Then just like that, a surprise –
a friend calls to me from across the street
proving that maybe
every man is not an island.
Maybe we are peninsulas
jutting out into the deep all by ourselves
our foggy grey matter convincing us
that’s how this world works
but really
our hearts hum
to the same rhythm.
We long to be pulled
back to the mainland,
we hope
for a break
in the disconsolate clouds.