Sleep Dealers

It's hard to believe that people around,
that girl down the street and that man
waiting tables, all miss the unmoving
brokenness at the heart of their world.

May be they just chose not to see it, not to look the dishonesty of the moments
in the eye and die inside, while they are given full marks by this naive little world
for putting on their dresses and heading to work
and making cold love everyday -
A shiny happy Grade A for being alive, while
all the way down inside they are wondering
just why.
May be. Or may be they are the truthless moments, ones traded
to save face, clear conscience,
trip on power and make for a sound-good
conclusion,
to feel a little awesome-er about
their jagged mirror selves.
May be they are the ones that were
once more than flesh and blood and bloody rubber,
once,
ones that could feel joy and pain like one might
feel a careless razor gash across their shower limbs,
ones that could give and receive good love, be, just
be,
without taking away from the world around.
Or may be they are simply what they are,
sans awkward apologies, born
to break it down,
the universe's way of telling you that you've
got to kick some serious ass to
survive. To knock you down,
give you the dust cough and the time
to realize that feeling alive is
a select privilege, that the basic begins at just
making it through. You know?
Because how else do these random people on the road not break down
and cry their knees red, not
take a minute out to cross the rails carelessly
enough?. God knows there are too many people in the world
who have no clue why they are still there, while
they suspect that they aren't. Type in the word
'Painless' on your Google bar and the second thing you are suggested
is 'Death'. (The first being 'Delivery'. Haha. Guess between the painlessness
of delivery and the painlessness of death, it's one massive track change.)
There are all these people, 'losers'  and 'quitters', you'll say, haunting forums
just trying to gather enough balls to say fuck it for a last time.
Their reasons will never be your reasons, and no reason will
ever be enough. But they are all reasons nonetheless.
Isn't it sad that a boy will take time to type in 230 characters
just to see whether injection of alcohol has more chances
of 'luck' than a building leap? He'll be up all night, comparing the stats,
trying to believe that the world that doesn't provide you with faith,
is still gentle enough to provide you with an (embarrassment-less)
escape.  Because if you fail to do this right, it's another
epic punchline at your expense. Your own little joke,
one you don't understand enough to try pretend to
laugh along. Some will go through with it,
most wouldn't. Some'd land up in the ICU
with a Brain Damage no Floyd will care to sing about.
And some, they'd leave behind a trail of bewildered questions
in their wake -
'Never pegged her to be the kind!'
'Him? But he always smiled and waved at me on his way to school!'
'Tsk tsk, sad sad thing.
Real unfortunate. So much bright light,
just wasted. If only someone had got in her way,
asked her not to quit.'
No one will stop to think that may be, just may be,
these nameless lot did not really quit, may be
they just believed in looking for a world a little
less caught up in lies and fears than this one
right here, that may be
while they couldn't do it your way, they just
got their pieces together and
moved the fuck on.

So yes. It's hard to believe that people around,
that girl down the street and that man
waiting tables, all miss the unmoving brokenness
at the heart of their world.

But then again, it's hard to
believe

anything.















'Don't bend/don't break/ baby, don't back down'
Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
:)