Find Yourself
by Jeremy Szuder
When calm becomes the way in
by stepping away from bounded bodies,
when each pin pricked sound becomes
a smooth bed of blunt tipped nails
and the vision of light cascades
through appendages and between eyes,
you will have eagerly found the soft moments
that always wait faithfully in calculated
clicks that were stolen from clock faces,
from second hands that sweep like
dragon swings around in circles during
robust lived days and dark motionless nights.
Each bell jar corpse of pulse
bounces against one another in confusion
and clusters of like minded souls stick
to the gates of their chosen temples, their
most important places of ritual and habit.
The adhesion is strong but the movement
wears the mind thin as money trades pockets.
The soul cashes out it’s internal layers
of chips and folded bills, leaving each
unique and beautiful person standing
back alone again in underwear before
floor to ceiling mirrors tilted slightly,
giving off the image that everyone
is leaning back into the arms of comfort.
You are not wrong to set free the flames to do
their biddings without you as a constant host,
each inferno knowing well the path it took
to come back when you have found yourself again.
Shaking away the dust of dreary days
set on repeat, you find solitude in the gardens
of water and air.
You find ease from expectation as nothing stands
before finish lines, each outstretched ribbon
holding enough slack to snap mere moments
after you have already been captured
by the lens of a race much too close
to call by any other means.
This time when calm became my way in,
I was standing in the wake of a gigantic ocean
with phone in hand, recording the sounds
of small clams shutting tighter against my
fingernail as it tapped on blue black shells
when I came to the realization that my
contribution to the whole of this magnificent
spread was of little importance other than
continuing the motion of my internal gears.
Knowing I could take large bites out of
the cobalt blue skies that still had enough
pacification to appease everyone else
who might stand still long enough
to find themselves again as well.
Jeremy Szuder has spent 15 years as a musician and graphic designer, 25 years self-publishing Zines, 10 years deejaying, and continues to have illustrations and poems published by fine art and literary publications across the U.S.A. and Canada. He lives in Glendale, California.
