The ridicule validates an affirmation

Laugh and get it out of your system (a system indeed, manufactured, created, fabricated, built through a process and mass-produced); it's nothing new to me. The ridicule, the laughter, the disregard, it collectively validates an affirmation of my existence, as painful and embarrassing as it is. And it helps keep the burning sensation alive. As Dostoevsky's fool noted, many make fun of the fool in regard to his foolishness, but no one knows how foolish the fool is as intimately as the fool him/herself, and that is something others will never experience. What have you got to be proud of? huh? a 1 million dollar watch and a mirror that reflects a large gape? Your leather wallets? nice shoes? cute purses? I like some of this stuff too: the Doc's I wear feed the machine that grids and eats me; I pay into the whole chaotic symmetry that somehow instills a belief of autonomy; I tread softly, you should too...there exists a miscellany of dreams and schemes that which have been carefully placed before you. 

An old friend of mine used to make the flowers sing

      he'd pull your ears to the ground and whisper, "listen closely, they're dying."

Rocks contained attached thought

&

everything, he said, was grandiose.

He'd hug me real tight   

      because in theory, he explained, we only push away:

He shared this 

with me.

He was probably saying something about metaphysicks and the illness of being at ease in bubble uni-verse. 

I hardly saw any of this, blinded with thoughts that thought they knew more than he.

I felt insanely alone, that night, staring 

at the blank wall

The air was cold because the AC was on, and the noise,

the hum, brought back images of momma

My mother and her pack of cigarettes; my mother and her alcohol; my mother and her schemes; my mother and my father-fighting; my mother-cold and coughing; my mother and thanksgiving and christmas dinners that gradually disintegrated into thin air. My mother, appearing, disappearing, re-appearing, and finally, vanishing.

Everything made much more sense when it didn't make any sense.

how did I end up here?

I don't even remember: 

the ground occasionally and often shifts

"Man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind."

The absence reveals a void present in my mind and being;

it colored everything:

I saw it in the smiles of children

In the glances of strangers

In the guitar that played a jolly tune;

At times, individuals occasioned, "are you alright?"

while the ragpickers continued whistling

and the hum from the cold air machine 

felt welcoming,

as thought it came from a faint whisper

seemingly 

from the underground

as I sat there, on a chair, 

feeling nothing in particular and everything 

that brought numbness and tears

a paradox that i made no sense of

nor tried to make any sense of

"There are things that must cause you to lose reason or you have none to lose" -Gotthold Lessing