Color Studies From The Thing (1982)

color studies from the thing (1982)

POV: you’re recording thunderstorm ambience at midnight while the university students playing in the rain scream every time there’s a particularly big flash of lightning

frank writing UNKILLABLE on the drums when playing in the city he almost died in. gerard performing cancer for a lost friend. ending with famous last words. finally getting to see this band with my little brother, 7 years after first hearing them. man.

truthfully, my soul longs

for the warm embrace of faith in something bigger,

just as much as it rejects

the cold handshake of the vengeful God

(or a God’s vengeful believers,

depending how you see it).

no, i seek not religion;

like the atoms of my very being

i crave the emergence of crystals.

could i be greater than the sum of my parts?

is there a someone

or a something

who walked through the dingy magick store of space-time

and rifled through the gently clinking boxes of rocks and gems

and somehow

amongst the clutter and sparkle

chose to pick me up,

dust me off,

and take me home?

am i to one day be displayed

on the trinket shelf of the universe?

perhaps this is the journey of life:

being carried softly home

and placed amongst the precious things

as a tender voice says

“oh, aren’t you beautiful?”

(Link to Deadline article)

lying in the middle of the road

five friends side by side

the stellar emu spread out above our heads.

this mountain is one of the few places left we can see it -

we drove 8 hours just for this.

we debate crushes

and aliens

and marks for the mid-sem

and whether the new taylor swift album will be good

and at some point someone pipes up into the conversation,

declaring

“there’s no fucking way humanity will last another 100 years!”

we all laugh in unison,

the first agreement of the night.

the ensuing silence

less the settling of a gentle orbit

and more the runaway spiral into a black hole,

the words circling closer

constricting

as we feel the rotation of the earth below.

in the dark

someone quietly passes me some skittles;

someone gently squeezes my hand.

what is there to debate?

many studies recently have found

young people experience anxiety

related to climate change

related to war

related to those goddamn phones

that are showing us the truth,

more horrors seen by an individual than ever before.

did they really need studies to know that we’re terrified?

just ask us.

i wish i could say that it comforts me to know

those stars we were looking at

will probably stay shining long after

all of this is gone

but all i can muster is the constant buzz of melancholy

shimmering under my skin like the sky above

with all its loneliness

and it’s immortality

and our fleetingness

and my helplessness