Everyone owns a piece,
a furrowed canopy casting dimness and light,
a measureless magnitude of rapture and defeat.

We are Prince Andrew at the battle of Austerlitz,
on our backs surveying boundless lofty firmament.
surrendering to tranquil silent drifts of stratocumuli,
finding our meagerness within the scale.

In temperamental squalls,
tormenting dark wrinkles restless with despair,
fling violent raindrops, hurtling us into prolonged deluge.

But pale aqua cloudless expanses befriend us,
our golden reanimated childhoods,
our glowing ripening renewals,
our blithe, balmy afternoons.

Beneath starlight’s vaulting,
where we rejoin our secret selves,
where waltzing and weeping are partners,
where laughter and grief cohabit.

The doctors have pills for this.
Tablets paint our ceilings and plaster our cracks.
The opiates topple our towers,
Even sorrow is pickpocketed in our torpor.

We have lost our stake in the macrocosm
when the lyrics of our anima are flattened.

Our acclimation to the Santa Ana winds
is our claim,
our title to be pummeled in airspace.

Detox is our emancipation,
unleashing the motion of our atmosphere,
we inhale our azure and indigo.
It is needed to play percussion,
to thrive in rhythms of life’s glory.