Synesthesia
#3 of Poetry
The universe is a mixed-up place. We're all trying to make sense of it. Perhaps those who can trace the topography of a smell see it more clearly than the rest of us.
To colour, to breathe and taste
The arcs of light across the ears;
Racing stripes of taste and sound
Careening wild--in concentric circles
To find the bull's-eye point of progress
Where we, as living museums,
Do store each speck of feeling.
And cross they do in corridors between
Neurons in our guts and hearts,
Each unfurling its personal propaganda,
Unique signature handshakes,
All coalescing in emotional centres
To evolve into intricate imagery of smell
And tactile recreations of sound,
Reverberating across rib bone and kneecap cartilage,
Realigning its prison into an orchestral miasma,
A flesh organ grinder both immaculate and unfathomable.
Is it any wonder the worlds collide?
Is it insane that wires become ensnared?
Plugs upon plugs, more zeroes than thinkable;
We are built for failure, oh my child--
But our downfalls leave the sharpest vapour trails,
Sketching our lives in combinations of senses,
Leaving our marks on the baseboards of the universe,
Pissing our names in the atomic snow.
Our lives are synesthesia realised;
Experience the glow and do not run.