Hope

but she took my hands in hers,
looked into my eyes,
and with a smile
breaking apart
the smooth skin of her
beautiful face
with which she'd seen
a thousand centuries,
countless
men and women
live and die in constant fear,
she told me:

'You and I are not
unlike the stars
shining above.
We serve our purpose
for as long as we can,
for longer than we ever
thought possible.
We help the sailors
lost on an ink-black sea
and the lost souls
wandering the deserts.
We provide light for the
lonely and the hopeless.
But like everything else,
eventually,
we fade out.'

I wanted to tell her
that I feared the sun
for those exact reasons,
that blue skies meant
the loss of hope.
I wanted to ask
about my friends,
gone to the other side,
smiling in my dreams
and telling me to hang on,
not to forget.

And I can't help wondering:
once I'm gone,
who will remember them?
Who will remember me?

But she let go of my hands
and slowly faded away
into the mist
of an autumn dawn.
All that was left was
The dew on the grass
and the cold in my bones.

She was gone too fast,
as were all the ghosts
that now haunt my dreams.
But I know that one day
we'll all be together again
and,
if we don't laugh,
well,
at least we'll smile.

One can only hope.

Rotting

Grabbing my cold keys and
stepping over the
remains of a cat,
teeth bared in an eternal grin,
I push open the door
and step into my world.

Slowly walking up the stairs
the effluvia of the
other tenants stab my nostrils.
It smells like loneliness.
It smells like sadness.
It smells like poverty.

Boiled cabbage or boiled rice
boiled leek or boiled carrots,
it's all tasteless and cheap
and will provide them with enough fuel
to drag themselves
to their rank bathrooms
and shit it all in the bowl,
wondering where they've gone wrong
and what they've ever done to deserve this.

It's easy to pity them,
it's important to pity them,
because it makes me forget my own
unavoidable condition;
my tear-stained present
and the inevitable
decay of my being.
It stops me from thinking about
how it'll all end:
In a glorious blaze
from my cigarette,
as I fall asleep on the couch?
Or will I merely have an aneurysm
while cooking my beans?
Will I lie on the floor for days,
unable to move or call for help,
slowly dying and already feeling
the rats nibbling at my toes?

Outside, a little girl screams,
out of joy from some game?
Out of joy from not being cramped
into a smelly, one-bedroom apartment,
watching some fuzzy cartoon
while pretending her
parents are not
drunkenly copulating on
the other side of the paper-thin wall?
Or out of pain,
for having yet again
fallen hands first
onto a discarded needle,
or a broken beer bottle?
Or perhaps she knows more than
the rest of us
and is aware of her doom
and that screaming,
while it won't help her none,
at least it'll make things better for a second,
just a split second,
because any second away from here
is golden bliss.

I lock the door behind me,
not sure why since my shit
is as shitty as their shit.
but it's mine and not theirs
and so they might still covet their
neighbors' crap.
I don't blame them,
pulling a caper,
no matter how low key,
will keep you busy for a bit.
Hell, I'd swipe their shit if
I could muster the will
to get off my fat ass.

The sky is forever gray,
always makes you think it's about to rain,
but the rain never comes.
You'd think it would wash away the scum
and the dirt from the streets,
but the gutters have been blocked
by so many used diapers,
broken appliances
and fetid garbage bags
that the rain would just turn
into a flood.

Then all the filth and
all the waste
and all the useless
hopeless people
would float to the top,
gasping for breath,
because even broken people
fight for their right to live.

If we're lucky,
we'll all drown and rot together,
feeding the fish
and the seagulls
and the crabs
while our world
slowly molds away deep under,
forgotten from the world,
unsmelled and unseen,
finally.