Breath of Fresh Air, A Poem

Breath of Fresh Air
By: Charles Wood


It starts with a breath of fresh air. A nice full lung grab of the clean crisp cackled canopy that engulfs everything. After the breath, the long, required, needed, desired, breath of air, we can move onto the tangled jumble of thoughts, words, and unknown letters that have yet to be penned down. Perhaps we should have never left the Street Angels' side. But to regret is, again, something that I don't know.

It moves towards the inner chambers of my heart's beating, pulsating ventricles; the aortas, veins, and red blood cells. Thump-thump thump-thump thump-thump, like the body before it, bouncing along hurting, yet still getting up, without cry, only a simple small shrug. Giving out cry implies personification; that heart and body could both be human.

The rush fills the faded synapses of damaged brain cells; bursting through crevasses that have long since been unused. Idle fodder, a short denial of faithless thought, follows the river down from the mountain top out into the freeing sea. Here waits the ship of some famous old design, again, it is a lonely sight of my mind's own misguided necessity; shall it prove that dreams can or won't come true?

The middle is occupied by the red cobble pavement; stones of un-uniform design and shades. Darker reds here, lighter perhaps over there, with a few off color browns to be tossed in with the rest. The spaces between them marked by sounds, or rather, a thought that had at one moment captured space in your eyes. This cobblestone street no longer road, path, or byway; but the far off thoughts of your unhindered subconscious mind.

Perhaps here, not before, nor after I would think, comes the lyrics of some song, or phrase from book, or quote from movie, or words that group together in ways that make us understand. What started, what we began, must be finished. Sit down you're rocking the boat, old man. Stand again and be jailed for your auspicious deeds. Inherently, herently, whatever the case your actions speak louder than the words unheard, unsaid.

The end begins at dawn; funny as that marks that start of most beginnings. For so many brains see and think new day, think brighter tomorrow, think fresh start of unknown creations. Society is banished, forced to see nothing but shades of gray; no color left in our current world. Go to school, go to college, get a job, get married, get a house, get children, and you're free then, alleged.

The last few lines are to be given to solace. Not much more can be said, nor later read. But a few things are left before tired eyes find comfort of my childhood bed. A few more thoughts must be shared, a few more words must be writ, and a few more syllables must escape the Minotaur's maze before hyperbolicly I'm dead. For when death comes and outstretches his hand coldly, it'll begin and it'll end with one final comforting breath of fresh air.