LIke battery acid

My tongue arced lightening at anticipation as that which should not enter a human stands a supersonic white rabbit atop the tip of my finger.

The rabbit dives from its perch, into esophageal abyss, ribbed like a tunnel, and I wonder if bunny feels at home here as I do with it. Rabbit venom still lingers in my mouth and for pre-longated seconds or minutes or hours that felt like weeks and months and years I wait; I look at the world outside my window. I wait, and I wait. I look at the concrete, and like Bob Seger, I wait for the emotion, I wait to wake up and resonate with truth and move beyond all the bullshit my eyes make me see. I wait to sense everything. I wait to watch the trees breathe, see the buildings sway with love, or perhaps hate, stop to enjoy the waltz of two floodlights down a dark alley where only their presence exists. But, perhaps more importantly, more than anything else:

I wait.

The rabbit I have eaten now eats me. I feel him gnawing just behind my eyes, he eats away at muscles and tendons so that now I am left with no choice but to grin, he runs laps around my skull sloshing my brain fluid until that too begins to spin in whatever direction this bunny fancies. That is always the risk with eating the rabbit, but this isn’t like the Ortolan: There was no napkin to hide under; When you eat the rabbit, you are only left with you.

The air becomes so thick, every atom accounted for, everything floating where it belongs, each piece serving its role, which suddenly becomes so much more clear to me. Hands with numbed buzzing fingertips like kaleidoscopes; I chase them across my face and around the room; purples and blues and reds trail behind them, and me too, and I think that might be a trope, but I haven’t woken up enough to read it yet. I look into the back alley from my nest; I see water droplets stream through the air, each individual bead caught by the light, no longer a blanket of water but millions of threads that make up the most beautiful image, so grand, that few would ever really see it. The wind whirls and dies. In that moment the electron waterfall hovers, and under the lights I see thousands of water worlds, micro-Earths taking residence here just long enough for me to see and hear and smell them, long enough for me to know everything about them without truly understanding a goddamned thing.

Bundled up against the wind; out here the waterfall loses its majesty. From where I stand now, I can’t see the tapestry that has woven itself into the city tonight. Is something that makes up part of a whole self-aware? Or merely along for the ride? Everything I thought I was missing before starts to show up; everything I needed to know whether this was a dud or not has come walk with me. Buildings billow, gather all their steam and blow it out. Trees are no longer a single entity, they are a community of life bundled together. Each leaf in its own light, each dances and sings and is the star of its own show. Trees like Atlas stand with pride in support of the world above. Telephone poles stand like giants, some with smooth or rough concrete, some with smooth or gnarled wood splinters primed to bury into my skin, as though they themselves wish for a taste of the rabbit. With the filter removed, all subtlety is lost. There is no longer no excuse to not ask that building if it wants to talk, it’s rude to not dance with the trees and all those leaves (even if only for a moment), and it’s not so unreasonable to ask the hostile telephone pole why it is so rude. The silently inanimate suddenly spring to life, their stories so much easier to hear now and seemingly more enjoyable. The echoes of my feet make the perfect music against the faces of buildings and in empty stairwells of parking garages that give a perfect view of the east and west side of the city. And as I climb to the top and walk over to the edge and stick my head over the edge and I see the 2D world below me and I cease to be just a human and I become a 60 foot giant, I scream: Like a wolf howls to be heard and to hear its own voice screaming back at it, I scream.

My heart races at each breath and I become aware that I am here.

God’s deniability and stubbing infallibility, the inability to accept others hospitably,

Art as a means of remodeling and cracking through this world,

The Wall, Fight Club, Lord of the Flies,

Imagination chokes while reality dies,

Looking at people and cars as the everything twirls,

I’ve been standing in rain far to long to be out here comfortably.

In this final stretch my brain races,

Moving too fast, my mouth can’t charade with mimics,

So that most sentences end in, “I don’t know what I’m trying to articulate,”

Even as, “I am the smartest man in the world, and that is because I know one thing, which is I

know nothing.” My brain begins to speculate,

Coming down always has my mouth flummoxed,

Wishing two could switch places.

Sometimes, as I walk, my thoughts and actions feel far too contrived,

I lose sight of where myself and the universe and other people end,

My sanity is chipped away, my identity is a mystery,

But here I scream in braying whoops, spewing ecstasy,

Tears and droplets, two become one because I don’t have to pretend,

It’s in these moments of waking dreaming that I KNOW—I’m alive.