drummer

The Empty Room

Securely tucked inside the second floor bedroom of the brownstone, he sat motionless.  Staring through the pane of glass in the empty room, he could see his ever-present corner of the world below.  Children laughing, screaming and running in the street beneath the heat of the summer sun.  Their existence being closest removed from their Creator, they didn't have a care or concern.  The boy in the room, expressionless and observant, surveyed the children's every movement as he contemplated his own mundane existence.  Hour after hour and day after day, obediently and attentively, the boy in the room examined the appearance of life beneath him.  And the radio in the room played:

"When we were young the future was so bright. The old neighborhood was so alive, And every kid on the whole damn street, Was gonna make it big and not be beat. Now the neighborhood's cracked and torn. The kids are grown up, but their lives are worn. How can one little street swallow so many lives?"

The boy's alcoholic father remained on the first floor of the brownstone.  Pathetic and weak, his self-pity poured from a bottle.  Drowning in his misery, the father stood and drew the blinds to conceal himself from the outside world.  Hour after hour and day after day, the father sat clutching his resentment and contempt for his only son.  Submerged in bitterness, he remembered the day of contradiction.  The day his only son came into existence.  The same day the curtains closed on his wife's life.  And the radio in the room played:

"Lightning crashes, an old mother dies. Her intentions fall to the floor, The angel closed her eyes. The confusion that was hers, Belongs now, to the baby down the hall."

The boy in the room remained fixed and established.  Unable to move since the day he became a quadriplegic.  The boy in the room continued to gaze through the window at the screaming and laughing children running in the street below.  "I am a circumstance," the boy thought to himself.  Above the window his father had placed the question asked by Jesus, as he hung from the cross, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"  The boy didn't ask, "Why me?" but instead, he looked down at the children and thought, "Why not me?" and "Better me than anyone else."  And the radio in the room played:

"So don't let the world bring you down. Not everyone here is that fucked up and cold. Remember why you came, and why you're alive. Experience the warmth before you grow old."

The boy in the empty room stopped asking God, long ago, for the ability to touch, feel, scream. laugh and run with the children outside his window.  Every single day the boy had prayed for God's hand to permit him the gift of movement.  Every single day God's answer, always the same, echoed in the empty room, "No, no, no."  And the radio in the room played:

"I never realized I was spread so thin. To live was to late, And I was empty within. Hungry, feeding on the chaos and living in sin. Downward spiral, where do I begin? It all started when I lost my mother, No love for myself and no love for another. Searching to find love up on a higher level, Finding nothing but questions and devils."

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