the lathe of nihilism

(everything’s over

and everything’s clear

everyone’s older

and no one is here

- adam duritz)

 

walking around in the cold

wiping my runny nose

on my sleeve

hands shaking

feel tired

 

lately the drink i’ve been chasing

is catching up with me

 

every night i say

not today

but i’m already working on

a twenty-four ounce can of beer

bagged in black plastic

the other hand a cigarette

flask full of fireball

 

is this any less meaningless

than all the apartments i’m passing

lit with screens

filled with vacant voyeur eyes

netflix is the new fix

and everyone’s binging

while constantly fingering phones

 

drones that have made their way home

from jobs that rob more than they pay

 

not today?

give me a reason other than l.a.

concrete, cement, steel

that makes me feel forthright

in my nihilism

 

waiting for a felon

to point a gun at me

i will wrap my lips

around the barrel

and gaze with pleading eyes

 

all your solutions

the how, the why

i’ve tried

now i’m just a guy

meandering in the meaninglessness

of all motion

 

impervious to reason

because there is no reason

 

chain smoking

brain no longer choking

on the lies it was once

forced to swallow

i callow

amid the consciousness

contained within the bliss

of knowing nothing matters

 

a dreamless state of existence

 

i don’t say this to convert

if i don’t believe what you believe matters

then why would it matter to me what you believe

 

i just nod and move on

leave you to linger in the liabilities

of your limitations

 

my only hope is that you continue

to have something to hold onto

i am what happens when you don’t

 

no matter my choice of font

my words will never be pretty

 

on the verge of converge i will never be

no rehab repentance

people will judge the sludge

of my existence

every eye dry at my funeral

 

never comprehending i meant what i wrote

as they break things down

to their simplest equations

 

preschoolers learning to count

while i mount an assault on physics

challenging the validity of quantifying

our existence

after all, its laws that govern

may not have even existed

prior to the big bang

 

another beer, another cigarette

found a place to take a shit

we defecate almost as much as we eat

very little of what goes in us

offers sustenance

 

and love is an export

rarely do we import

especially when expressed

in the form of consumerism

 

dead flowers decay

diamonds can be hocked

and everything else in stock

is just an easy way to convey

the inconvenience of someone else’s need

 

in l.a. they step over dead bodies

sidewalk without chalk

before crime scene police tape will rape

with a detour

increasing the distance to your destination

 

not yet wasted but beer basted

my brain has tasted momentary reprieve

while my body is ready to fall to its knees

concede

that when all my literary heroes died

from all the drinking

there was no need for final words

 

***