Do we really want to leave our hometown?
To hell with this middle-class neighborhood, decorated with manicured front lawns of emerald grass smeared in geese ****. Nobody, but Arnie looked behind the identical white-brick houses for the skeletons half-buried in the backyards. Arnie used to be distracted by the pure white porches, the perfectly red-layered brick, and the ebony pavement seared from the heat of the cascading sun. As the summer morning stretched in monotony, Arnie went over to his mother’s house and looked more closely at the aluminum siding, sweeping his fingers across the crookedness in the fortifications. He touched the void in the blackness and the cracks outlining the surface. Underneath there, no rich substance laid in the soil.
But he knew something full of dread and full of anger resided in the dried-out bark and withered flower petals. With his shovel, he sifted through the dirt and wondered how much longer the seeds could sustain themselves in this soft and vulnerable soil. The ground decayed under his tennis shoes as Arnie closed his eyes, and felt the wind brushing up against his shoulder. He imagined the weather cloaked itself in the guise of a carpenter, chopping down the ancient trees with scythe and axe, and snipping down the stalks of tender flowers before they could grow to maturity.
Later that day, his mother told him children in this neighborhood either blossomed early, or never even experienced first bloom. Arnie ran around in circles, wishing the leaves and petals lost their infatuation with the wind, so they wouldn’t drift away, floating aimlessly from town to town searching for their heaven.
He knew no one wanted to live in this small town their whole life, wasting away in the sunset as the birds weep alone in the nests lined against the rain gutters. His mother and father worked every single day, consumed with their busy selves, they forgot to schedule for an exit-plan, their get-a-way maps stayed locked up in the bottom desk drawer, the hinges rusted over the years.
When he turned, sixteen Arnie’s parents bought him a new shiny red 2010 civic. They handed him the keys and right then and there, he thought they wanted him to travel, to see worlds that looked different from the one he dwelled in. As he turned over the engine, Arnie realized the automobile appeared less and less as a transaction for his spirit. Not an anchor, but rather a cement block tied around his ankles, the knot tightly secured. The candy coat paint was too bright and too shiny.
He slept in bed that night and wondered would he ever leave his cozy room, as the blankets warmed him up from the approaching winter. He knew he was sheltered, but this shelter was home.
He kept forgetting if the walls were supposed to keep the elements out, or barricade him inside. The roof over his head made him feel secure, but sometimes he felt his home confined his body, his soul, and his spirit, as if his house was a bird cage. He told his mother, Don’t tell me the sky is the limit, when this ceiling
prevents me from spreading my wings, and flying towards the heavens.
I’m leaving this town, he thought.
Our generation believed we were the salt of the earth, as though we’d conquered the city, and yet we still ended up salting the earth, daring anyone to defy our intelligence and uniqueness. Yet, we were not original, we were not even different.
Arnie napped on his autumn red couch and his body didn’t feel made of flesh and bone. It felt composed of stones, and he couldn’t get up. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to get up. He had millions of ideas that roared through his mind every twenty minutes. Like a subway train, but they always became derailed. Off the tracks before they came into fruition, before they reached the station, with every sip of wine with every **** of bud. So he waited patiently for the next train,
hoping to go somewhere with his life. Though eventually, he knew that train would not come whenever he pleased. He had to leave this couch, get off his *** and go.
Suburban mansions furnished with comfortable furniture and luxurious amenities. Wide flat LED screens were the new remedy. We had become tolerant to obscenities that flash and sparkle in the highest resolution, surround sound, so the brainwashing was soothing, as the subliminal messages were grooving. Through our ear canals and advertisement clutter pollution. Soul distortion as Arnie watched graphic images, but it was in the clearest quality. So he was in awe and disgusted, but at the same time he ******* loved it.
So stop saying you invented this and you invented that. Arnie knew the sun already scorched every original idea into smoldering ash.
But he didn’t want to burn. He wanted to survive. He didn’t want to remain a burnout. He wanted to rekindle the hearth and leave this godforsaken slow-burning ashtray, where everyone was trying to find a match to bring the light back
But we sit in assigned seating,
complacent in our concrete prisons, our youth decaying rapidly,
angst already cemented in our minds
Faux utopia where young minds rot in classrooms
Classrooms with no windows
We have opulence
but no oxygen
we can’t breathe but
we don’t know if it’s from this airless building
Or the smoke that surrounds us
so I guess we are LOST
Can’t you see? This (grab shirt) this is false confidence
we fuel our arrogance with shallow compliments
we are hypocrites
a walking contradiction
only our masks hide our lies so well.
Our souls are engulfed in sin from the day we are born
So I guess you can say we were all born
with something original.
But Arnie is oblivious to the shadows
that attach themselves to his weak shoulders
He’s stopped his afternoon naps by the tree,
The shade
is the brother of the shadows
There is sunlight
only a few feet away
Arnie only has to reach
Reach out with his hand,
To feel the warmth of the sun,
there is light
in this dark world.