What do I have
a book
and no convictions
perhaps
all I have is
this:
exiting a subway station
going up the steps
squeezed between
too many pedestrians
I hear every shoe
scrape against the cement
and stare at the spit
of punkasses
frozen at -13 Celsius
a night that howls
like a monster
but does not eat me
steps
aimless steps
driven mad
like the man
without a thought
that laughs
at the joke
of
eternity.
The end
had come
plummeting to the ground
my fingers spread
making one last contact
with the sidewalk
the rough cement
at the base
of this ultimate world
I was dying
my heart had only a few
beats left
before the entire
intoxication of life
would vanish
and I
touching this world
for a last time
on the street side
the hard grey cement
the pain and the beauty
the last sight of sky
the last gust of air
leaving
all the strange
beautiful
perplexing realities
within the earth
that was holding me
for the very last time.
Inaccessible trees stand in the fog as the limits to my world, a fog dense and metaphysical trees alien as my cavernous thoughts a few brave lifeless sticks emerge from the snow the milky wind brushing whitening them slowly with the impassible oblivion that has set in, an ivory spell led astray into this cold nook of washed away eternity, while I’m encapsulated in the immobility of this white extraneous soul a pleasing despair that is felt after each footstep in the ice.
What is there in this cave
a view to open lands
an earth, deranged and full
but an earth nonetheless
where nothing belongs,
above the expanse
full too of this emptiness
a quiet eternity
lost of words
almost a loose world
the mote of dust
under the murky ray of a sun
unreachable by time,
fragmentary boundless
as the white untrammeled snow
over the excerpts of reality
retreating
with its history
of the purest subjectivity,
with its wishes
of weightless dreams,
in this cave
on human thoughts
with an excess of time
and the open lands to forever
left untouched.
I release a deep breath
unawares of anything
I’ve been away
weaving dreams
like a curing madness
the petty circumference of my desire
impels me to
move
not one finger
an inertia comparable
to an everlasting god
that has lived a thousand infinities,
in the deepest streets
in the coldest thoughts
I am a reckless survivor
dreaming in poetry
as a small pebble
tucked away
under the entire
weight
of the universe.
I turn my head
finally
after days:
the streets are covered with snow.
I’ve been unaware
like the boy
quietly placing a dot
after every sentence
of lyrical self-absorption:
the consequence
of being
irrelevant.
This is the first step
into a wide open world
the toes stepping on frosty ledges
in an abandoned city
with closed eyes everything is ownerless
then the wispy breeze
then the last leaf of the last tree
then your hand in your inside pocket
hopelessly seeking the tobacco pipe
and the curled tobacco tatters
that will accompany you through
the long twisted journey of smoke and ash;
and while this can be a dream
another broken dimension of subjectivity
you can still feel the rubber of the shoe
stepping on the frigid pavement without cars
the shadows of street signs
wrapping around angles and grayness
as the horizon grows dim with sudden silence
the eyes watery, glorious, unbelieving
of the eternity of being lost and free
in an abandoned city
hidden somehow
in a wide open world.
It was the simple joy
that comes
when struck for the first
time by the world
the world and my ideas!
the world and my expectations!
the world and my darkly routes!
it was the joy of stepping out
on the limb of the 21st century
underneath the lamppost
and shivering in the cold air
altogether free and set loose
with the world
as my own personal halo
the world and my inconsequential philosophies!
the world and my dreamlike body!
the world and my lyrical noise!
– the joy that comes
from being almost here…
I am no longer immersed somewhat buried or submerged but closely tied or floating with those immediate things we call by words I am that I am my most irrelevant philosophy closest to the light bulb the breath on my nostril to the plan and the hope I am abstractedly here together with the contents of plain reality since I have nothing to say I stare directly at the center of objects yes, they are there and I haven’t yet said anything in particular, however close I feel to the intellectual assumption we like to nickname the world my words seem abandoned like the stone someone else kicked aside down the thorny bushes of something else.
A true nihilist would remain in silence, write not one verse or statement, would speak concisely the bare minimum needed for survival, short ambiguous phrases. Such a person would greet and live amongst people only in so far as he sees them as intimately unreal as his bubbling dream-thoughts, as his dream-desires, as his dreamed dreams. The true nihilist would be amazed by everything, from an ant that crawls over the index finger to the cold hairs of despair; every thing becomes an unknown appendix to a greater unfamiliar reality. He would have his coffee and smile because he is a passenger of time, or perhaps, he may consider being suddenly born into the suit of a wholly grown man that conducts his thinking through the agency of amputated words. The nihilist, if one ever existed, would come and go with the tides of the ordinary, would probably visit too landscapes in consciousness that a believer of truth could never reach (truth being an ten-ton burden); that nihilist, if so much can be said, would render all things possible and would make of contradictions and paradoxes household items with which he interacts daily.
The nihilist takes his coffee without sugar and life without objections.
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