Blasphemous Questions

Somewhere in navigating the guts of the machine the labyrinth's darkness became its beauty. The realization the objective was not escape, but that we are the maze itself canoodling in crevices of mustard gas clouds and pear orchards. Bodies die without fanfare and live with contorted enthusiasm. Angelic eyelashes flutter in the fireworks. We sip joy our body feels not so missing in this turn left compared to our last attempt at a due north. The contraption flashes flimflam epileptic seizure screen cellphone gluttony. We stare down the glitter impossible to eradicate like herpes in our delusions. Odysseus munches lotuses. There is a constant hum in the background of everything. The murmur of Thanatos whispering, "Do it." 

The choice to eat fruit in the abyss of a Friday night or clack an animal survival instinct dancing to the Trinidadian drum beats. We paint ourselves in tribal consanguinity. I could remember that once, but now all I remember is the machine, the beautiful shadows of it, that I am the atomic shifts. I want most to have the illusion back. The colossus of boredom stares echoing the hum. I rub the backs of my upper ears with thumbs in tiny circles with my eyes closed pretending these are not my thumbs. In the darkness there is an openness, like an open field away from the machine's walls like somewhere my mother told me god lived. I do my best not to believe her as I savor the realness of a tactile moment.

I live with the a constant tightness below each set of ribs, pinching an anxious vice of "I do not want to be here." The notion repeats in annihilation piano keys. I missed my 401k payments the past two years. The accountant is negligent on the tax advantages of retirement planning. The thought of ending it sits like a constant bird inside the room. I rummage through the fecklessness of talking to other humans about the bird. I decline. There is little or any aid but to regain the illusion. Pluck into the change purse for the magic bean of sex or love or a suppository of human connection. Twist the wonder capsule up into the hole. Fill the void with high school intelligence and television sparkles. Weigh the first blasphemous question. Am I more frightened of dying or living?   

Depression is under each glitter fleck in a permanent readiness to return. Any flicker of hope is a dual hook sharpened in the pang. We know its potential yet hope anyway watching ourselves fall back into the pit, a new face to mourn in the rotating masks we call savior of the solar and lunar cycles. The heaviness in the lie that we say we know there is no savior. There is only the second blasphemous question, what makes me happy? An honest answer is the sphinx's requirement for exit.