matt pond PA

September 24, 2016

Oversized Rulers.

Standing beside the lines of an oversized ruler, distorted commands come from behind a pool of black glass.

It’s smells like the first day of fourth grade. When all the floors have been redone, before the janitors have lost hope.

“Number eight, please take three steps forward.”

In a daze, life’s crimes are clicked and counted autobiographically. Who knew about the secret midnight snacks, the twelve ounces of party-cheese devoured alone in the pre-dawn light, restless and unsteady at the failure of divorce. How could it be that someone had seen the jealousies kept locked up airtight, the cracked marble vault below the furrows, the identical small, black holes.

Here in the dreamworld, the rulers inside know everything. The fumbled interviews with The New York Times, the hastily signed demon deals, mightily misguided repartee and misplaced decorum. A brazen daily allowance of hypocrisy, punctuated with a glib, imitation kickflip.

It gets worse. There were women with green eyes who believed in every strum, who followed from faraway lands. Friends who fell off the hay-wagon, snubbed by the devolving wooden wheels, reins whipping in pursuit of the always-unreachable golden treehouse.

oversizedrulers

Looking down from a frosted plastic window, the ocean and sky mimic shades of blue in a way that makes the world seem empty of everything. Unknown coasts recalling pasts of blue-green existence.

In The Aeroplane Over the Sea. Each note, thought, pause placed exactly where it’s supposed to be. A pure testament to love, spinning through infinity. Like the indiscernible shapes of Iðunn and Bragi, feeding me and pulling me forward.

While I may not get any closer to the sun — with my turtle chin, my pointless tangents, my cloak of doubt, my annoying affinity for the word “like” — I cannot stop throwing myself forward.

As if caught in a looping, loping simile that won’t quit. Like, ever.

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