Atlantis - Shane Koyczan
Your entire body shakes when you laughAs if your sense of humor was built on a fault line
And the coast of your heart falls into the ocean of your self and I'm left looking for this Atlantis
Left looking for this place that exists in stories told by old men who were there when mathematics assured them
Their willingness to believe was greater than their determination to dismiss
I'm left looking for Atlantis
Regardless of the scientists that insist my efforts would be better spent unearthing clues to where the wild things went
Try as it might
Faith can't put a dent in fact
So we must settle for watching science reenact the world
As if the universe was curled around this globe
And is we consider that the universe is never-ending then we're not even a microbe
We're like a death threat from a pacifist, we're nothing
But the Hizenburg Uncertainty Principal states that: "Nothing is fo' shizzle"
And the interesting thing about that is it insures the principle itself can't even be a fact
But we still act as if this time we can see the forest through the trees
Regardless of the softwood lumber levy we fall in line like reforested pine
It's all straight rows where everything grows a little less wild and a little more hum-drum-ho-hum
We come from a mentality that rarely sees the horror in symmetry
Or the beauty in non-conformity
We insist that for us, everything must be clear cut
But what about philosophy?
What about the tree that fell in the forest that no-one was around to hear?
It's a little less clear and a little more deep
Deep like: If Oprah Winfry farts in a bathtub and no bubbles come to the surface is there an alternate universe where the price of gas is cheap?
Possible... But we can't prove it
Anymore than we can prove that light can move fast enough to stop a monster hiding in the closet
We deposit our faith in fear but clear our minds to the possibility that maybe we as adults secretly sometimes still get scared of the dark
Things that go bump in the night
And I can't prove that I have ever loved anyone
But despite the smoking and the overweight body, I want to grow old with you
Go through muscle and joint pains to the point that every time it rains we can feel it in our knees
Get arthritis so bad that every time we move we sound like two bowls of Rice Krispies
We're all: Snap, crackle and pop
But we still take the time to stop and take the time
I'm looking for Atlantis
Letting faith turn this fiction into fact
As if I've tracked this missing continent for decades and all I know so far is that it's somewhere under water
I'm looking for clues in those blurry photos of UFOs and thinking: If aliens are so smart then why don't they start making their spaceships look like airplanes? That way we'd just point to the sky and say "Oh look, an airplane! How commonplace and not at all suspect"
We're all shipwrecked on this idea that everything has to be explained
But maybe we just need to believe that lemming jump off of cliffs to prove that they love us
And sure, that sacrifice is as empty as the box of condoms politicians used when they thought that could fuck us
But it's nice to believe that somebody up there cares enough to plummet onto jagged backbreaking rocks in an attempt to tell us we're beautiful
Tell us that as far as life goes
Our fingerprints are like snowflakes
We leave them on everything but they melt in the time it takes to touch someone's tongue
But if we're lucky
Maybe we'll remember long of the sunken cities of lost continents
This is for each child who is a monument to the ones who came before
Maybe the best that we can hope for is that those we leave behind find comfort in knowing
They were born out of love and not science
That biology explains the how but love explains the why
So in the event of our deaths we herby bequeath all of these words to you
And they are only meant to say that uncertainty is something everyone goes through
And there's not much in the way of proof but believe me
We loved you
We held our breaths for your first step, your first word
We laughed when it finally occurred to you: lemons are sour
This is for every time love becomes the finest minuet in the darkest hour
This is for those who scour the streets wondering where the wild things went
For the believers who leant us their madness
This is for everyone we miss
And this is for the children who were lost
Sadness is nothing more than the cost of being able to smile once and a while
And grief is the trial we stand to offer evidence that your fingerprints were left on our hearts and our skin
And in terms of proof, love can be demonstrated in giving
Our lives consist of the efforts we give of swimming towards a lost continent
Where you are rumored to be living
posted by That Canadian Guy @ 2:45 a.m.
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