Charades

God makes us wear his sunshine above our waists;

Tailor-sewn lines draw up the corners of our lips.

On our best days we play charades,

masking our truths and parading our fakes,

simply given a paper with our word of the day

(Be it “happy,” “gracious,” “calm,” or so on)

scrawled sloppily in ink from the tip of a pen

which never graced paper except to defend

the lie that our generation is forced to accept:

That everything is all okay.

 

How demented a world when we ignore the truth

and instead accept acts of falsehood

simply because they are easier to deal with.

Made to stifle our reality we to grow silent;

We long for the neck of a bottle, the barrel of a gun,

as alcohol stains the stitches on our mouths

and we write our suicide notes upon napkins.

Yet alcohol does not quench our thirst,

so we wash down our medicine with absence.

Pills ease insomnia, (eventually) ease even more.

We yearn for the silent fall of twilight, because,

Sleeping is the only release.

            (Sleeping is only a release.)

 

We abhor everything.

we grow belligerent as the clock strikes 6 AM,

too tired from our insomnia and our pretending.

Standing six feet from the edge we hanker for a fight,

            (eager to be tossed over the ledge)

and we watch the sun naively rise over the horizon.

It bathes our stoic faces in its ignorant light.