Vertigo

I take a step, I lurch forward.
I walk down the stairs
old fears crowd my mind ;
chasing away all other thoughts
 save the one:
I'll fall, I'm about to fall.

Walk along the ledge,
looking down at the traffic,
the cars rushing past.
Lights blurred, yet streets alight.

Tiny liliputian people
who seem to crawl;
pretend to go on living,
dead souls,
of dead people walking home
in a dead city,
but calls itself the city of joy.

Dare myself to take the leap,
take the ever promised fall,
a split second, a fraction,
I stand towering before the horizon;

The earth rises up to meet me,
into its stern embrace I rush,
This heady, inexplicable sensation-
this is all there is to it,
nothing can beat me in this race!


 I let go so utterly-
the pain unendurable,
the humiliation, the malady,
the unsourced melancholy
 the torment that sears through limb and nerve
and in it path dissolves all hope
all reason for existence.