Clean sheets, dirty life

It’s hard to hear much, the sound of life is so loud. Society street runs close and noisy in front of us, like a tv with full frequency range, without a remote.

We step out on the rational sidewalk, lit with endlessly blinking and clanking machines. Middleway traffic’s so heavy you can’t see the opposite side, but that’s where we want to go. Red lights, pushing people and coughing, grinding vehicles makes it a frightening struggle to cross, but we push back and press on.

On the emotional sidewalk it’s worryingly silent and dark. It used to bathe in the comforting music of a good life lived, like the friendly humming of a dishwasher left going over night. But only the hollow echo of random opposite-side merchandize leaks through, trashing its sterile sound bleeps between the abandoned houses. I notice cracks in the paving stone where the old bands used to play.

We kickstart a dead street lamp and gather around the light. The new shadows reduce our visibility and grows the pavement cracks larger. A moving, low frequency rumble starts to roll from a cross street. It’s out of our sight but in our control. It’s not much but we can work with it. We have bad memories. We are not perfect. But we have sound experience. We have train wrecks of emotional loops that can be sampled and put in a logical sequencential railway.

It will make sense. We owe that much to our sidewalk and the humming dishwasher.

 

Black Urban Death

We’re so close
And the shell’s so thin
But the splitting and the grinding
Keeps us whipping up the grin

From across the shining street
There’s a perfect line of stares
Filled with winding steps of faith
And a blinding gaze of doubt

It’s so clear
The breaking, stopping sound
The impossible distraction
The accelerating ground

Listening to the hill
I heard the wind was good
To men and women still
The difference was unloud

I really never thought
To begin again
A living left unsaid
And a dying to be told

It’s so clear
The breaking, stopping sound
The impossible distraction
The accelerating ground