Saturday Morning Jazz

Saturday Morning Jazz

Saturday morning,
Dad's already on the run,
Mom's still unmoving as a sloth.
Their children scatter down as the clock strikes seven:
The oldest to the kitchen, fixing up cereal,
The middle and youngest flipping on the television.

The clock strikes ten, dad's still not back,
Mom might as well be in a coma.
The youngest says that nothing good is on anymore,
It's just stuff that I don't understand.
The oldest is in the kitchen, waiting for a phone call to come.

The middle kid flips the television's input for the DVD
To play a movie that the youngest one will understand.
It's the same story:
A princess that needs to be saved,
And in more modern ones, maybe she needs to save.
But they all end the same way,
With soul mates being the most important element.
And still the eldest is waiting for a phone call that will never come.

While the youngest is enthralled
With the same fairy tales,
The middle leaves to watch a different kind of tale.
There are relationships yes,
But ones that are based on belligerence,
Belligerence to admit that two people have feelings for each other.
For it is from this belligerence that the drama unfolds.

The phone rings, the alarm's shrill bells
Evoke a slight motion from mom who continues to dream.
The eldest in excitement, picks it up.
It is not the one worth waiting for, just a friend.
A friend who says that the one the eldest
Waited for has long since left.

The friend continues about her life
Outside of the confines of home.
How her academic studies were,
The jobs she had to do to stay in school.

How relationships, what little help they were, how
It was a series of one-night stands
Not unlike a series of battles in a war
Over the next great emotional territories.

How the flame of war began
With the kindling of alliances and liaisons
Until a moment lit the spark
That climaxed into a blaze
With the white-hot intensity of
A thousand stars in empty space.

And how the flame would
Eventually die down.
Some into a warm glow
Like coals in the fireplace
Bringing comfort.

How others would die
Into a cloud of ashes
Leaving destruction in its wake,
After the flame was extinguished altogether.

The huge, secretive forests vanished,
Into brown stumps, painted gray.
The once refreshing oasis,
Eden in the desert,
Reduced to just another patch.
Wide blue oceans, parched until
Their saltwater became clouds in the sky.
The Earth was the way it was before life:
A barren wasteland,
Except for the constant nuclear snow.

Those territories of platonic,
Lust, affection, crushed.
It is not more than another pointless war.
Like war raging outside that the eldest's
Siblings have drowned out with the media.

For all its positives, the friend continues,
Her relationships ended with one-sided emotions.
Jealousy, unwanted attention,
Needing attention, infidelity,
Few by mutual consent.

For there is something that someone will always want.
To go to fancy places, to go on vacation,
Eternal devotion and companionship,
A house, a bed, food.
They want a relationship because
They can get what they want from it.
If not, they just move on.

Even if there is such a thing as a perfect relationship,
It's not the same emotions,
Always some difference in intensity.
There will always be reluctance
Because something must always give
And take.

Not in the silver screen that the eldest sees,
Nor the small screen that the youngest
Views the videos of fairy tales come true
In the form of flashing animation,
The middle child has not yet reached the
Crushing realities of real relationships.

There's still the belief that two people
Are meant for each other and will get together eventually.
It's through the virtual screen that
For all the abuse, the violence, the stubbornness
There are two people that truly care for each other.
A relationship that everyone can see.

For all the crap that the media shows
There are people meant for each other,
The friend continues on.
But the guy might not have the balls
To say so, nor is the girl willing
To speak up.

That's why there will always be two
People on the battlefield.
Both chasing shadows of the other
For protection, until they lose
The real person to an idealization.
Never the real thing.

Really, it's all about fancy,
One moment you're falling
The next you just want to get out as soon as possible.
Almost like getting drunk,
Or getting high on painkillers.
It slows the body down,
And saturates it with endorphins.
Just enough to forget our real troubles.
Nothing wrong with that,
It's just that eventually the crash comes,
And we're broken and fucked up
More than we were before.

There are plenty of desperate fools out there
Trapped in fairy tale land,
Still believing that they'll find their true mate
Or the one that they yearn for
Reciprocates their same feelings.
These desperados have already lost the battle
That they never fought.
Or they have realized too late and missed it.

These are the fools that are the pawns
Of Aphrodite and her son Eros.
Not only the deities of such emotions,
But that of the ones that play matchmaker.
The people who wish to pair up two people,
Whether they are truly meant for each other,
Or not.
These cherub wannabes,
For all their good intentions burn more bridges
Than they mend,
Resulting in a much less stable world.

The eldest hangs up the phone,
Tired of the cynical friend,
And continues to wait for a lover
That will never call back.

Mom is still sleeping like the dead,
No smell, no rot yet, but it's
Coming as eventual as the
Army of soldiers carrying their
M16s, their weapons of destruction.

The middle and youngest,
Still watch wayward characters
Searching for their idealized mates.
Dad still hasn't come home,
All of them waiting for a night with no end.