Underneath the Rotting Floor

There's things inside myself that I don't know how to put right.
There's the tendency to shrug, say not everything needs fixing.
I am less myself than the day of the hummingbird parade.
Or perhaps, I am just less.

I get excited about the way little habitats rearrange themselves. The wiry frame of an old man, reading a good book. Old book, like him, and sure, maybe he's read it before, though at my age not much room for do-overs. My? His. I haven't inherited his age, only the smell of dust his hels kick up when he wanders. The older I get, the more comfortable I find myself inside the gaze of old, brown men. Crisp off-the-hanging, linen-crumple men with old wives' tales at home and fish in the oven, and fresh bread in the pantry, and I feel myself getting stale inside their mouths, but not their memories, because in their memories, I play a different game. Inside their minds, I get to keep fresh, like things long rotten.

It's a perfect day for sleeping, except I'm playing cat-and-mouse with the man smoking across the street. I, too, carry the ways of rickety old men.

On the underside of my memory, nothing is ever dead.

I woke up with this in my head, only not exactly. I woke thinking of peoples living underneath the floorboards, except not always. Of the way we rearrange ourselves due to impending humanity, or perhaps because. A fleeting conversation down a long Uber ride. Bottom line,

People adapt.

Skin and bones we waste away
Two months gone by, no light of day
Children rocking back and forth
They don't play much anymore
The smell of death is in the air
Our chances are much less than fair
[...]
Oh, I can't see the light
Is it day or has darkness come
Like the men my brothers fight?

Until one day, at last, we no longer.

Do you ascribe much weight to dreams?

I do, and lately, mine have been weighted and battle-worn. Good things have forgotten to happen, except when I come awake, I'm confronted by a different reality. My reality is quite good at the moment, quite happy, which leaves me to wonder whose darkness I've stolen, and why I can't seem to break out of this cycle of nightmares.

This one, I actually dreamt.

Nu plânge căci nu e de noi.
Ne-aşteaptă o lume de groază
Şi nimeni nu dă înapoi.
[Don't cry, it's not for us.
A nightmare world awaits us,
And no one's backing down.

I used to love them, but lately I haven't paid much attention to what they release, what they consider worth saying. And then, I'm surprised, whenever I hear this in concert, A nightmare world awaits us, and no one is backing down always makes me shiver. It seems such an apt description for our present circumstances. Passé becomes, too quickly, blasé. I have an old man's ways about me.

Were you aware Skunk Anansie's still putting out songs? Because I wasn't. I listen to the old stuff, perhaps sometimes too much for my own good. I've never known how to surround myself with young people, but suppose I'm not at that age yet, of seeking out kids whose crazy diamond spark I can mooch on.

Warm eyes were dancing down the street
You had no bitterness, not broken, oh
Demons were dragons in retreat

But this came as a surprise. I am still capable of being surprised. Not just worn down by this bastard sun that won't come out of the clouds yet to scorch us.

Well. This has been me for this week's #threetunetuesday. Cheers, @ablaze, and the rest of you for reading this nonsense.