i.
i said i was a virgin,
but i lied — because
you said you never
wanted to be with
someone
more experienced
than you.
ii.
the real reason
i left you that night —
you refused
to follow me
into the mosh pit,
because you
were fucking scared
and i wasn’t.
iii.
…
Stopping at the local deli and coffee shop, my co-worker, if you can pass him off as any sort of professional, and I decide to sit where the off white walls met in the corner by the door. Taking our break late had its benefits: mainly the avoidance of the lunch crowd. The business men and hung-over college slackers created quite the din, consisting mainly of conversations about TPS reports and parties ending in cigarette stained fingers holding hair back in the bathroom; all topics resolving in the conclusion that there is nothing better to talk about.
The blistering winds of the front coming through Voluntown had made their way through this side street establishment and the handful of people who mustered the energy to get their liquid revival sat scattered into the clearly hand painted, navy blue chairs. As a haven from the frostbitten toes that their travel entailed, almost anybody was accepted and any action short of murder was absolved. The streets had been swept from the remains of a snowstorm that was forcefully pushed into the back of the townspeople’s minds, and caked with salt on the side leading away from this seldom found establishment among the majority of pine trees that hugged the hills for what seemed like miles.
People are bound to snap in an environment that warrants so much open space that they feel insignificant and muffled by its sounds.
“Do you ever feel like you’re surrounded by people who think that at the end of some long, dusty road there will be another world where everything they’ve ever known, all the people they’ve ever met, the ideas they have explored, will be wiped from their mental slate.” I blurted almost too fast to understand, waiting for my coffee to cool.
“I don’t think I follow” the professional said, taking another drag of his cigarette before moving the ashtray in an almost territorial fashion.
“Like, that the people we meet are just in some big marathon to escape their surroundings because they are unsatisfied with what they have done so far”
“I honestly don’t know…but what I do know is that I feel sorry for all of those people. They may be trying to escape from all of those ideas but what they don’t realize is the whole process of leaving should be for personal gain, not for escape.”
“Exactly” I muttered, trying not to interrupt this highly surprising moment of clarity among his usual slurred speech.
“Hey, I’m all for finding your calling because it’s what needs to happen for someone to be happy, but to leave for an escape is just fucking stupid. The time they spend eventually figuring out that people are generally the same everywhere you go turns into the whole journey of life and they’ve just wasted it.”
He uncrossed his legs and puts out his cigarette moving the ashtray back to the center of the tilted table.
“Well, that makes sense but how am I suppose to deal with everyone’s crazy shit all the time?”
“When you figure that out, you better write a fucking novel about it…. Let’s get out of here I wanna grab a dimebag before we head back” he says eloquently,
And with fluid motions we exited the coffee shop, passed the nameless faces of winter’s prisoners and saw the moon rise to the end of the only narrow, barren road back to the neighboring towns. Walking towards the battered and black dodge truck, I realized that the trees weren’t just insulation for the words that these people, myself included, had spoken to be trapped in this hollow place. Seeing the leaves and pine needles dropping slowly amongst the frozen dew made me realize that they were prisoners too.
Their branches and foliage were chained to them over time by the earth, weighing them to places where the people did not appreciate what they had; their freedoms, their loss, their escape and insolence to each other. The trees were desperately trying to float towards the sun, and with the burden of roots were just as trapped as us. I wonder if they enjoy coffee.
The remorseless butcher left lead
in my steaks. You can sit there with hornets
forcing their way from the hallways in your hips
I thought. Yesterday you impersonated rust
although you hardly paid attention as I sat
and dissolved you last
with a spotless amnesty centered
in the basic urge…
What a sweet barrier
curtains
battling to keep me out
I’d take a yellow stringrappel
through the headwaters
collecting around your heart
You would never saythe simple leverage between us
is prying you from the dark
I’d never saythe eggs you made me
weren’t secretly a promise
Maybe it is art when the shadows
of madness are burned into the
corneas of house wives on their
last straws with their long-haired
children sneaking out at night to
steal birthday cards from mailboxes;
senseless revenge for what they
craved from their fathers;
bitter and salivating feelings rising
as the envelope dissolves in
puddles gathered by curbs they’ve
traced with their fingers intended
to discover parts of preteen girls
who lose their virginity in a failed
vision of what they’ve cried over on
silver-screens meant to bond them
with their mothers and assure themselves
that the chivalry of the 1940’s will rise
again, breathed through a generation
grown up to expect divorce and marital
turmoil in sleek and reinvented forms;
all happening in the chemical reaction
that eats a moment that will never be
reproduced;
only to be reflected upon in horrifying
calamity before the cell phone alarm
goes off and the hours twist and converge
to mechanically pilot the day to come.
So here we found the cornering
sensations from a house we put
to sea with our son
The variations in pressure left
finger stains on that saber grandpa swore
had seen a mans heart
[I have many]
We had all seen the careful retort
but he had a way with candles
and he was killing us all
I need this
(Source: cupsahoy, via venomousvernacular)
You are trapped in a disease
with invisible symptoms to the
naked eye in which you complain
about not finding the right person
to share your interests or even
any sense of moral fortitude but
when you reject what is right in
front of you I will not feign sadness.
There is nothing noble in the art
of ignorance.
Sitting on the balcony, we rapped
false philosophies that were soaked in rum
and laced with cigarette smoke that you
were waving out of your face.
There is no way I could comprehend what
you’ve been through and how even as
the rest of the guests were slowly destroying
the apartment, a parting gift for the tragedy
of grasping adulthood without parents, you told
me how much you enjoyed every moment
passing like consecutive births in which the
host cannot comprehend the hard work ahead.
I find it hilarious that when the people who post and glorify loner characters in movies or books are approached by these individuals in real life they act too cool to deal with any of their shit.
