the shelf is an altar

[Movement I: The Glass Menagerie] The shelf is an altar of architectural light, Where the trinity waits to extinguish the night. Jack is the foundation, a structural grid, Jim is the gateway where the memory is hid. And Jon is the silence, the infinite key, Unlocking the cell of the former me. [Movement II: The Transcendent Drown] I am shedding the anchors of gravity’s pull, Filling the void until the emptiness is full. The collar is no longer a leash of the street, But a tether to a world that is bittersweet and neat. I kiss the horizon at the bottle’s cold edge, Stepping away from the rational ledge. [Movement III: The Mirror Mirage] (Keyboard Solo: High-speed, shifting time signatures) The countertop expands into a nebula’s floor, I don’t recognize the man in the door. Is he the projection? Or am I the machine? Lost in the static of the space in-between. The labels are sigils, the amber is gold, A story of escaping the physical mold. [Movement IV: The Ephemeral Exit] The liquid is a ladder, the amber is the sun, The race for the exit has finally been won. I am the ripple, the echo, the glass, Watching the ghost of my identity pass. No longer a victim of the throat or the hand, Just a sovereign prince in a dead-spirit land.