Tag Archives: friendships

Everything Becomes Nothing

4 Replies

We abate
softly
into nothingness
into finality
into the darkness
beneath a great empty canvas
and so on this certain passing
I felt almost touched
and almost
momentarily elated
if you will
from the brooding vacuous maelstrom
that has become most days
it was somewhat like catching
the whisper of an echo
in a backroom
or hearing the flight
of a hummingbird
at the other end
of the garden,
catching a ghost
at the edge
of a photograph,
reaching out and
touching dust
floating in sunlight,
absorbing the strain
of a single violin
in a blazing symphony
or feeling the breeze
that barely bends the meadow.

As fleeting as fireflies
we become to each other.

Just give it a little time
and everything
becomes nothing.

Advertisement

Fuck January

Leave a reply

It was -26C out.
I had turned the key twice but my car wouldn’t start.
It would just growl a little then die.
I gave it a dirty look.
It started.

I drove across a city
covered in ice as brittle as glass
and snow turned hard as stone
screaming along to a rap song I hated
but knew the words to anyways.

I passed a kid who had his tongue stuck to a pole.
His was frantically waving his arms about.
I gave him the finger and hit the gas.

I laughed. He looked like a penguin
except that he was holding a cellphone.
There you go, Buddy. Don’t need your tongue to
text your way out of this one.

Text, Motherfucker, text!

I got to her house and barged in wearing a squirrel.
Putting beers in the fridge I wondered why
it was cold as my ex’s dead heart inside
when she came down wearing a parka without pants
because nothing about her made sense
except her legs.

“I have baseboard heating. It’s too expensive.” She said.

I turned on the sink
hoping for some hot water to splash into my numbed face
but the pilot light must have been off because
it came out colder than glacier run-off in Alaska.
North Alaska.
I thought that it could have been
another money saving device.
What the fuck, was she a penguin too?

Penguins, they were everywhere…they were watching me.

I knew her for ten years.
We’ve only fucked twice
and that made me inexplicably sad
all of a sudden
so I cracked open a tall can.

“Really?” She said. “It’s 10AM.”
“Best to get an early start.”
“Why do you always drink?”
“It helps me face the absolute terror of every day.”
“So, you’re a coward is what you’re saying.”

Women were always on the attack with me.
They hated me secretly and used everything about me
against me with relative ease and the reason
that I hung out with them more than other guys
was because I was the biggest fucking masochist on the planet.

“Jesus, is EVERYTHING cold around here?” I shouted
then gulped the thing down.
‘Oh, that’s nice.” I said.

She laughed. “At least your beer is cold.”

“Yes, it is.” I said. “You are so maddeningly beautiful when you’re disappointed in me. Do you have any perks?”

She smiled, turned around and opened a cupboard.

I Was Hoping Just to Sit and Talk To You

4 Replies

In this city of the lonely
the dying
the hard-asses and hard of luck
it doesn’t matter to you
what I’ve seen
been through
cared about or my troubles
while doing so.

It doesn’t matter at all.
Why should it?

I don’t know you
and you rarely ever
know me so we’ve always
managed to get by with a
certain air of indifference
like the people you may know at work
at school in the hallways
on the streets
that you sometimes warm to or
mostly simply tolerate
throughout the daily course of
human traffic.

I have always felt that
something is missing
that something should be different so
I’m going to hand you my heart
without fear of what it would look
like to you.

I’m going to tell you things that
I haven’t told anyone.

I’m not going to lie or pretend
because I was never really good at that
to begin with.

I am just going to take this moment
to talk to you
just as though you were sitting here
in front of me
as that seems like a good start.

Would that be okay?

Great, here
pull up a chair.

Let us begin.