Thursday Poem
Another night of quasi-intellectual drunken soliloquy and hatching of sorrows
Harold and I discussed the wretched state of the country, universe
Glossing carefully over political analysis that we've both long grown
tired of, despite this being the election year of our lord, 2012
The year of Mayan ruination
Destruction
He told me the only thing of value that a dollar will buy you is a single
song music download or a McDouble
Everything else you could get would only take up space in an already
over-bloated and polluted world
And he's right
Although I'd gladly trade the frankenburger for two cups of shitty coffee
After all, people have died mining this Arabica holiness so that I could
stay awake long enough to bitch about how unfair life is
We talked in earnest and sharp detail
about the lines of the shape of certain women's faces
How the asshole should always be considered "exit only"
and how huge pricks make me feel like I need to shit
especially when dangling from a manchild who never learned how to use it
In a wine bottle fever, I whined about what a shitty writer I've become
How passionless I feel even dancing my fingers across the keys and how
only melancholic vitriol ever seems to trickle out
I told him all I wanted to do was write
with a "Wr" as well as an "r."
and he laughed at me
He regaled me with his own trials of the heart
for which I had no advice to give
only a pliable ear to amplify his thoughts through
Having been a failure in most romantic affairs, both serious and trivial
the cynic burned into my gut could only tell him that love and happiness
don't always coexist
It's all a matter of how willing you are to be smothered by one another
Whether or not you can tunnel your way through another person's psyche and
still see light at the end of it all
Whether you can remain stagnant with vexation or whether you can say
honestly that you would part as friends
I tell him that in my experience as wife, lover, friend, whore, con
artist, dung beetle...
that there is no such thing as perfection in another human being
Whatever we have before us, we will always crave outside stimulation
Waves of brain bubbles that can't always be found in the emotional
sub terrain where sex, worship and butterfly kisses reside
Be it in music, letters, books, capsules or atom bombs
not one human being ever walked the earth blameless
What matters is if you can feel distance like an arthritic ache
and double over as you cut these losses even when a tear cannot squeeze
its way out
If you can feel love even underneath the swelling of pride and ire
Harold is no stranger to any of this, nor to my jumbled explanations
We sat silent a few moments
digesting
ingesting more beautiful poison
embracing our awkwardness
embracing our inability to relate to almost anyone outside our immediate
sphere
I could see him untangling my words as well as his own
Something told me he'd be alright
He had to
He's my friend and I'm protecting him
Sheltering others is one of the only things I can ever seem to do right
Days later, I remembered my own tribulations
and I walled myself up in the cavern of my beat angel's citadel
until the cataclysm inside me buckled
for the moment
Everything is just a series of moments, after all.
Erin Reardon
Another night of quasi-intellectual drunken soliloquy and hatching of sorrows
Harold and I discussed the wretched state of the country, universe
Glossing carefully over political analysis that we've both long grown
tired of, despite this being the election year of our lord, 2012
The year of Mayan ruination
Destruction
He told me the only thing of value that a dollar will buy you is a single
song music download or a McDouble
Everything else you could get would only take up space in an already
over-bloated and polluted world
And he's right
Although I'd gladly trade the frankenburger for two cups of shitty coffee
After all, people have died mining this Arabica holiness so that I could
stay awake long enough to bitch about how unfair life is
We talked in earnest and sharp detail
about the lines of the shape of certain women's faces
How the asshole should always be considered "exit only"
and how huge pricks make me feel like I need to shit
especially when dangling from a manchild who never learned how to use it
In a wine bottle fever, I whined about what a shitty writer I've become
How passionless I feel even dancing my fingers across the keys and how
only melancholic vitriol ever seems to trickle out
I told him all I wanted to do was write
with a "Wr" as well as an "r."
and he laughed at me
He regaled me with his own trials of the heart
for which I had no advice to give
only a pliable ear to amplify his thoughts through
Having been a failure in most romantic affairs, both serious and trivial
the cynic burned into my gut could only tell him that love and happiness
don't always coexist
It's all a matter of how willing you are to be smothered by one another
Whether or not you can tunnel your way through another person's psyche and
still see light at the end of it all
Whether you can remain stagnant with vexation or whether you can say
honestly that you would part as friends
I tell him that in my experience as wife, lover, friend, whore, con
artist, dung beetle...
that there is no such thing as perfection in another human being
Whatever we have before us, we will always crave outside stimulation
Waves of brain bubbles that can't always be found in the emotional
sub terrain where sex, worship and butterfly kisses reside
Be it in music, letters, books, capsules or atom bombs
not one human being ever walked the earth blameless
What matters is if you can feel distance like an arthritic ache
and double over as you cut these losses even when a tear cannot squeeze
its way out
If you can feel love even underneath the swelling of pride and ire
Harold is no stranger to any of this, nor to my jumbled explanations
We sat silent a few moments
digesting
ingesting more beautiful poison
embracing our awkwardness
embracing our inability to relate to almost anyone outside our immediate
sphere
I could see him untangling my words as well as his own
Something told me he'd be alright
He had to
He's my friend and I'm protecting him
Sheltering others is one of the only things I can ever seem to do right
Days later, I remembered my own tribulations
and I walled myself up in the cavern of my beat angel's citadel
until the cataclysm inside me buckled
for the moment
Everything is just a series of moments, after all.
Erin Reardon
