Nothing is Wrong
The rest can be in flames
As you dip only your toes
To start the dream.
Get Alex Clark’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
Trip the motion, push the boulder blocking the cave,
Look over your shoulder to see the break of day as you enter.
Thumb the fray, furrow your brow and line the sheen, before the end of day, find the spell-caster,
With a grin that twists, blossom with both of your fists, outstretch the shadow’s parameters. In a daze,
Grow things on the roadside, throw paint on the specter, jettison the evidence, clean statues with buckets,
See existence in spasms — the curtain wings, the electrocuted flash of my skeleton, sideeying someone bleed as you pass with distinction.
Something is indeed up the sleeve — the last thing I think, falling asleep, lightning on live television.
There’s nothing to fear, I’m just a purveyor of my heart in this wasteland,
A tall destroyer, a nasty bug, a civil servant, unknowing, unearning, in a fit, knocking on the empty room of a scam, blitzed and backlashed by kindness. Nevermind that,
Just intuit your circumstance,
Restart the fantasy, peel your eyes as it enshrouds you.
Quick, grab your prize and duck out.
Stay afloat,
Line your walls, grab your coat,
Fall, parachute,
Free yourself or be resolute.
Let me see it, looking deep into the pearl
As the beach explodes,
Let me see what unfolds,
Stoking coals, cooling metal, blowing dandelions downwind a steep slope like a criminal.
There’s nothing wrong,
There’s everything odd about it. There’s nothing going on with me,
There’s all this music, all this fire anyway.
Steal away, oceans tweet and mountains creak in the thin shadow of our march,
Winds and lands roar, voices echo in this blade’s thin twinkle at dusk, turned perpendicular to the sun.
Between the frames, skies roll over graves,
Stars speed and rivers bleed in the split between pages, rustling with grain and rumbling with geothermal energy.
It’s not enough to get home. I have all this love with no way to get out. There’s nothing wrong,
There’s just something odd about the way I turned out.
Nothing is going on, everything is calm about the world —
Zoom in enough
And no one touches anything at all.
