Cacophonous Jazz Solo

 They only hear
What they want to hear,
It doesn't matter
What you say...
They only see
What they want to see,
It doesn't matter
What picture you paint...
They only feel
What they want to feel,
Even if it is negative or self-critical,
And then they will
Project it onto you...
No one really wants to see
The monster in themselves,
Even if they,
Somewhere in the depths of their psyche,
Or in the pit of their stomach,
Suspect it is there,
Crouching 
In some shadowy corner
Avoiding the light...
But they will easily
See a demon in you,
Pitchfork and torch words
Flying in the face
Of personal responsibility...
Shady mechanizations
Designed to soothe their soul
Victimized
By burgeoning shame...
We all play our part
In the orchestra pit
Oozing cacophonous jazz 
Into a disordered world...
They will place blame on others
For their own clumsy fingerings
Of the chords 
In their improvisational solo...
Of course,
It was you
Who made them
Lose their tempo...
It was you who made them
Fall from the balance beam
To strike ingloriously
The mat below
In a flurry of dust motes
Kicked up by the impact...
Talcum and rosin...
Blindness and fear...
Delicate and impenetrable
Are these things
They tell themselves...
Entangling webs
Covered in sticky dew
Designed to capture
Unwary insects...
Vibrations that alert
Jaws with venomous fangs
Just to the fore
Of a segmented abdomen
That will never be filled...
Driven by the emptiness inside,
But never really
Addressing its ultimate cause...
It's just their nature,
One might say,
Attempting to consume the pieces
That should, rather,
Be assembled
Into some thing new,
Some Rube Goldberg device
Harnessing zero point energy...
These starving creatures
Manage to live off of the void
At the center of their galaxy...
Arising From it,
And drawn back into it
After having been ejected into
The vastness of space...
What they suffer and experience
Is in line with the technical drawings
That they design...
Everything in its place,
Just as they subconsciously intended...
A play where they become
The tragic hero/protagonist...
Well,
Whatever helps you
Sleep at night...
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