A Void, We Call Life
When words fall short,
I sit in the world's shadows.
Watching the world through my window,
I rejoice absurd songs.
Life spills in laissez faire economics,
consuming dreams to rust.
Forgotten blue and white banners flutter.
Wind sighs in Red Oaks,
echoing the doleful cries of a lonesome.
The song rises:
a kite lifted by a gust
of ethereal wind.
Through my window,
humans look like pieces of unknown debris.
Scattered and strewn without rhyme nor reason,
Withered leaves swish through the grass,
Dandelions soar through the air
Rain falls like the tears of a homeless boy,
while a little girl sings::
"The Lord is taking a bath today."
A street sweeper laughs:
"Now I understand why God is cold."
Migratory birds fly by,
their eyes to the skies.
Angry crows peck the snow.
A duck walks towards the edge of a frozen lake,
staring at the surface.
A lyrebird cries from a bed of reeds.
Who am I to judge them?
I am no savior or hostage.
But merely human corruption, tattooed with invisible ink
on pages of The New York Times that keep me warm.
I’m forced up against a window,
I peer through refracted lenses.
I envy those people who finished themselves.
They didn’t desire heaven or fear hell.
Imagining nothingness,
they jumped to taste the bottom.
Fear of the unknown keeps me alive in this void,
we call life.
I open the window
and watch as life goes by
like a bat’s dream.
©Poet: Muhammad Nasrullah Khan
Copyright © Muhammad Nasrullah Khan | Year Posted 2022
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