Teeth
Listen up because I know the code. Get on your bike without shoes, and ride as fast as you can on a summer night, north, under big dark trees. Wear a baseball cap even though the sun is gone. Listen to some rock and roll. Like, Automatic or Sixes and Sevens or Your Motherfucker by Mondo Cozmo. Listen to that. Chew some crunchy candy-coated mint gum. Reckon that liberty comes with realizing none of it matters — every attempt to fit or please or impress is not the way— and that most of the sadness anyone you love swims around in, comes from failed attempts at fitting, pleasing, impressing. All of that’s a trick to keep us scrambling distracted, wasting time.
Crack your spine and stretch it out after sitting down at work all day. Open your mouth to sigh or cry or sing, and accidentally swallow the moon. Drop down into the soles of your feet pressed against metal and rubber. Go fast and burn stop signs. Watch. Slow down and make way for people too blind to see angels flying in the dark. See fireflies. Remember where you come from and what you came for.
Remember the people you love who have died. Even the ones who chose to. And get it, how bad it can be. How lonely and hopeless it can feel, lost inside the rolling mass of automation-isolation-compliance-consumption. Remember that there’s no way out through those machines. Consider that every poem and song and piece of art you love is a clue to getting free. A…
