Where Is The Light?

beginning with some soft classical music the city awakes and all the drunks
stand outside their favorite bar that opens at the same time and closes at the
same time and they walk in and order a cold glass of beer and their nightmare
begins as the music changes to some old country music and some of the ladies
get up and dance and the older men watch through blurry eyes and then the
music changes and this time some old rock music blares into the crowd and
everyone grimaces as it hurts their old ears and this is what you get at nine am
every day when all the old drunks sit quietly in their favorite chair and they
order another cold glass of beer and they sip and sip and they try and remember
who they once were but that was lost a long time ago and now they sit and
listen to some more classical music and they wonder if this is their last song and
dance.

a young and new addict sits and cooks his lover in a spoon and he injects it in his
skinny arm and he becomes God and the city creeps along the sidewalks and in
the corner a man pisses and moans as his bones are deep inside the pain he has
suffered and the young God addict stands up and looks at all of this with his
blurry eyes and he remembers his past as if it was yesterday and it was and he
was back in his village and his parents were passed out on the kitchen floor of
their two room shack and it was then the young God decided he had seen
enough and so he left for this city and now as the potion he has injected begins
to wear thin he begins to cook some more and he will be God for about six
months and then he will overdose in the exact same spot that he had become
the greatest being in the world and the city will always creep over him and
never will he be remembered for who he was.

the missing keep on missing and we look for them but they have all disappeared
and we lose a sister and a mother and her children will only have an old picture
of them and how they used to look before the streets took a hold of them and
used them and used them and when the street was done with them the men
who devour them took them and kept them a secret and we still remember
them and we march and march and shout and shout but the city is done with
them and the city is done with us but we still light those candles and we still
sing those songs and by the time the day is over and the streets are now quiet a
young girl stands as best she can as the glass pipe burns her fingers and she
stands and then a man in an old pickup truck stops and she gets in and they
drive down the streets where all the others have been taken and the man smiles
to the young girl and she never does make it back and they say she is now one
of the candles that are lit as the parade of the forgotten makes its way and the
flames of the candles burn the pictures of who they used to be.

here in our village the search is on for a madman who escaped his mind and
they did find him on the next island and we had to live in fear for a night and it
is like that here on this island where we have been for ten thousand years and
we allow outsiders to come here and we welcome them and we feed them and
they use us and they never give anything back and we try and sift through the
madness and then we have to deal with our own and we do the best we can and
every day we awake to the sounds of trains and they blow their horns and we
awake to the simple need to survive and we do as the trains smash by us and
our island as a madman walks across the bridge to us and we feed him and then
when he is done we carefully take him and show him the other side of us and
when we are done he is no more and it has been like this for ten thousand years as
we know enough of the evil of men and when we are done we close our door
and we all wonder to ourselves: where is the light?