waiting to live

I stare blankly into nothingness,

The cigarette burning my fingers,

Stale smoke clings to my clothes

But I don’t care anymore.

Accumulating between the bricks

Was a magic sludge of cigarette butts,

Overchewed gum, coagulated grime,

And nothingness, perfect nothingness.

To be forgotten, to be nothing at all,

What a gift to be ignored.

I’ve trodden these bricks for years

Without appreciating that nothingness.

And the nothingness behind nothingness,

I stare into the cracks between bricks

And beyond, into forgotten dreams, hearing

Ancient winds, distant lovers…

That gunk that accumulates between neurons,

That desire to tune out, to turn off.

To appreciate that which all ignore,

To bless the forgotten with awareness.

I stare blankly at my phone,

I stare blankly at my TV,

I stare blankly at my computer,

Those pixels sharp as hospital lights.

I stare blankly into my own madness,

Then, recalling those forgotten cracks

I am embraced by millions of lost souls

Whose eyes reveal they feel the same.

There is no comfort in the digital world,

That prison of evil emptiness!

Of trash that exists just to exist–

It holds nothing on my nothingness!

Every cigarette butt, every piece of gum,

Every ounce of that disgusting grime

Made a long journey to this destination,

From the beginning of time, from eternity.

From the big bang, 

To the grease in those cracks,

Everything has an origin

And an origin before that.

And then you too are staring into nothingness,

That perfect nothingness! What a gift.