Spokenword

Daniel Mark Patterson

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Snowglobe: Apocalypse

I sometimes feel like a Penguin in a snow globe
after the snow has fallen…As if all the
beautiful parts of my life have already
happened…the memories as awkward
and elusive as the snowflakes which
slipped through my flippers.

I long to dash headlong into brick
walls, jump suicidally off of skyscrapers
for the collision, the rush of air, the
chill of charged adrenaline
against skin, the metallic
taste of wounded life
on my tongue.

We are taught about Life and Death,
but nobody talks about limbo,
that too long purgatory of days
where the only thing that gets us by
is the monosyllabic crooning of the
voices in our head “this too shall pass.”
“This too shall pass.”

I miss my idealism when I believed
most people thought for themselves.
There was no such thing as
“hive mind” or “group think.”
When every girl that smiled
at me was my next crush,
and every girl I kissed
was the “one.”

I can barely remember my last kiss,
let alone the last kiss that really
mattered. Even the afterglow
is a barely accessible haze.

We are all capable of magic as children.
The difference between a Muggle
and a Wizard is that a Wizard
never fully grows up,
never loses the ability to
impose their imagination
on the world around them.

Inside the world of
language there lies a portal of
wonder and childhood delight.

Each of my pen strokes a half remembered
spell, of invocation, years fall off at the
edge of the vortex. I jump inside.

I am 10 years old. Peter Pan taunting
Captain Hook. Dorothy following
the yellow brick road. The world
is Supercalifragelisticexbealadocius.

There are reminders it wasn’t all wonderful.
The bullies surround me in the playground,
I once again remember the fear and
isolation of being a childhood outcast.
This time though I have an advantage.

One by one they attempt to speak…my
pen steals words from their tongue,
flings the insults back at them. They
reach for me, but hands no longer
belong to them, pants end up around
ankles, wedgies self-induced.

This is what it is to play Child God.
World of wonder created without fear.

Writing is the way I shake my snow globe.
Create new memories to bask in before
all that is glorious is once again reduced
to nostalgia, and I am alone waddling
through the aftermath.

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