a city of creative chaos

The most talented I’ve ever seen live in this town,
using the dark, chaotic energy here to fuel their emotion-filled ballads.
It’s a beautiful sight to see, and to hear,
but if you take a look behind the curtain, you’ll see an overdose,
or an overwhelmed barista not making enough to get by.
These are my kind of people, and my heart resonates
when they open their mouths to release their pain
into the songs that allow them to illuminate what is killing them.
But after you walk out of the theater, and down the shiny, trash-filled road
past the homeless man, past the posters about saving the planet while we can,
past the rain-drenched flyers about drag queen brunch in the wet grass,
past the tall, newly built buildings that house mostly no one at all,
you reach an intersection of rainbows, and you feel at home in this mess.
So you dance happily to the rap song that comes on the radio that a boy in high school taught you the dance to and you remember, and reminisce on what it’s like to be from a region where everyone is doing whatever they feel like doing, feeling whatever they feel like feeling, saving whatever they feel like saving, enlightening all the colors of the rainbow that we truly are.
But then you come home and sit in your body, and feel the darkness coming up behind you, touching your shoulder, creeping into your lungs, sinking into your soul, feeding into your dreams, and all you wanna do is drive far, far away to where the sun dries up all this anger and pain.
Since I’ve now become my own best friend, home will always be, to me, a creative, obsessive means to an end.