I wrote this piece in late 2016 after attending a concert. It is a rather schmaltzy piece of poetry, but I think anyone who loves the brilliance of live music can appreciate this kind of “in the moment” high you get when you attend a great show. I was also at a huge turning point in my life regarding my personal growth. I was on the verge of living on my own for the first time, I was ending a long term, serious relationship and not sure where I was going. For the first time as an adult, I didn’t really know who I was yet, what I liked about myself and what I loved about the world around me. I totally questioned my identity and what kind of person I wanted to be. This experience really helped me take the first steps towards a more complete version of the self I am today. Also, this piece is bittersweet given our current state in the world of zero live music, so it serves as a memory of things that have come to past, but a reminder of what is waiting for us on the other side.

I finally felt that spark underneath, that menacing undulation. It had been so long. How many nights has it been? How many humdrum weeks? The months drone on and the spark remains dormant. Maybe it was the psychosexual tension in the air, that dark cave hollowed out amongst the concrete jungle. The pulse was like thunder, vibrating through my feet charging every little toe and running up through my thighs, hips and inhabiting every space of my body.  It was a chamber, abandoned by time and utter indifference. Sounds emulating the cries of the gods, a reawakening of the senses.

Time now passes like scales. A crescendo’s anxious arrival finding shelter through the spaces that occupies moment to moment. Chords, wrapping around the minutes, seconds, carrying its listeners like a gentle wave through the universe. Another crash of percussion and a thousand lifetimes have passed in a blink of an eye. Lost, but not forgotten. Alone, but forever cradled by its harmony.

Haunted, Haunting, Haunts. Melody weaponizes a piercing shockwave, a flutter of my heart. Do I have to go home? Can I simply surrender? Can I make a pact with this moment? Will it capture me forever? I hope it smothers me into oblivion. To walk out of this dream alive or unscathed is to have felt nothing at all.

How many fortunate souls have gown down with this ship, only to rise, be reborn and become revitalized? It is a gift from a nameless piece of our universe. Who is to say that this journey is not bending our boundaries of space and time?

Applause breaks the sound barrier. The screams, the cries of joy beg to be enraptured, plead to be ravaged once again. Why does it have to end? There is no other beauty to run to. Only rejection, shame, fear and brutality. It is a dreadful fate to be turned away from such salvation. The price to re-enter into its grace is more than one soul can even bear.

Light gradually enters the aura of consciousness. The murmur of a moribund life echoes back into the chamber. I am a singular being once more, no longer a powerful wave piercing through the cosmos. I am a 27-year-old female several inches too short and about 50 pounds too heavy.  I will walk out of this hall of bliss and out into the streets full of filth where the magic does not travel. The little pieces I have gleaned have been stuffed into my pocket. I fear if I clutch onto them so hard, they will either escape my grasp or consume me. Consume me to a point where my hunger for its vibrato, its majesty will never be satiated.

Walking to my car, the weight of reality forces me down, down to a shuffle of regret. My compass tells me to go down, down into the mines where I must eat, sleep, breath mediocrity like dust from a coal shaft, chocking on the disappointment. But my true north calls me back to that place, back to that temple. As I glance behind me, a shadow hovers above the city. Clouds of light and beams of sounds circle like the eye of the hurricane directly above the hall of kings that generates a universal energy.

Looping through these past moments before I turn away is like wearing down an old record. The song, once a vibrant melody, begins to slow down all the lovely nuances fading with each turn of the table. The needle is an old, familiar scratch gently running its sharp nail into the grooves, releasing a most angelic noise.

I start the ignition and my body is transported reluctantly back to the realm of the mundane and away from the enchantment of that evening.