Youtopia
experimental poem with a tart ending.
There is a perfect world hidden in the wrinkles of our lives
Winking back at us as the train whisks out of the tunnel
It is in the silence between our songs
It swims in the laughter which echoes into the ceiling
The perfect world is unexplainable, like a teary smile it is breakable
It is both happy and sad and in a moment gone
One day I said,
I would grab a net and capture it,
the perfect world squirming between my palms and examine it
I looked between its scales,
silent subway rides skirting the city without delays
The days were clear
Skies deep like pools of glitter ocean
No sky scraper obstruction,
no Tower of Babel trying to touch the clouds
No smoke choking the layers of the atmosphere
The perfect world is a long, peaceful exhale
I checked under its tongue and heard voices
Sweet as melodies dipped in honey
Cool as coins tossed on concrete
Machine humming underneath
Bird songs every morning
I held tight onto the perfect world
Wanting to memorize its impeccable anatomy
Amalgam of all the things dear to me
It had no injustice, see,
No bitterness, no pain
No unspoken words, no hate
No fear of getting older
But when I turned it over
My blood went cold
I tossed the perfect world back
into the wrinkled recess of time
Wiping it’s stain from my hands
Hoping to never see it again
Because the perfect world lives in the tunnels we leave behind
Sleeping in the silence between our songs, swimming in the ceilings
I wrung my hands incessantly trying to shiver off that feeling
Because the perfect world didn’t contain a single human being