Half Drunk At 12:22 a.m.
I sit and stare at walls
while bittersweet music
plays
this is almost all
I would take from life
but she is in the other room
calling for me
to come to bed
but I don't want to come to bed
I only want to stare at walls
watching a dead spider still hanging
in its own web
while bittersweet music
plays
and what I never understood about the world
is why it always wants you to come to bed
when you only want to stare at walls
or perhaps walk out into the darkness
to nowhere in particular
or maybe drink one more bottle of wine
as you listen to the world decay
but this somehow seems
too impossible
too simple
to explain
so I will take one last drink
and go to bed
where she will ask me
what the hell
have I been doing
and I will tell her
nothing.
Years ago
I worked part time at a bookstore
and one day i asked the manager,
how can you do it?
Do what?
Spend so much of your time working,
without going crazy,
I mean.
After a moment
he sighed
and said,
It's like getting beat up
by the same bully every day
on the way home from school;
it's horrible,
but you get used to it
eventually.
It was the only true thing
I ever heard him say.
I feel like cutting
pieces of myself
away.
Layer
after
layer,
past skin
and muscle,
beneath blood
and bone.
I want to keep going
until I find something.
I would tear down
the world
and rebuild it
in your image:
drunk
and
stupid
and
so obscenely
beautiful.
The world kills you
everyday
simply because
it can.
And everyday
you rise
like some half assed phoenix
only to be
murdered again.
Each day
becoming
less
and
less
human,
more
and
more
something else.
The world doesn't ask
what the hell are you
gonna do about it
because it already
knows.
You will stand there and
take it
with that stupid look
on your face
clinging
to useless dreams
like handfuls
of broken eggs.
You will
take it and
take it and
take it
simply because no one ever told you
you had a choice.
I bet
most of the people
on this bus
are a lot like me,
headed toward some
unwanted
destination.
Probably work,
maybe school
or home.
Maybe an appointment with someone
they don't want to see,
in an office
in a building
somewhere
they don't want to be.
And I bet
like me they wish
the bus driver
would suddenly make a left
instead of a right
and turn down some new road
we've never seen
headed toward somewhere
we've never been,
laughing all the while.
Hooray,
we would say
like little children,
hooray for the kindly
bus driver
as weary of his destination
as the rest of us.
She calls her loneliness
by name
and smiles
as it flows
beneath her skin
seeps out her eyes
and trickles down
her cheeks.
She tastes it on her tounge
and speaks to it
in the darkness
of her room.
It has become
the only thing
she trusts,
the only thing
she's sure
will never leave her.
He killed himself
on her doorstep
so she would see
exactly what it was
she did to him.
He didn't know
she didn't live there
anymore.