A Mask

I’m not ready to die
But I’m close
Long nights alone
Are better than ever
My head is company enough
When it’s not clouded
But I’m beginning to find
I’m too damned angry
At what or why
I don’t know
It just came out
When I was all alone
With no one to hide from
Was it always there
And I was just a mask
Can’t tell
Who I am
Or if I was any different
Under all those layers
I claimed were me

friday night

It used to work, but now it doesn’t. Staring at the wall noticing the texture differences; white and peeling. The wall unit is humming but not cooling. The night is hot and there is whiskey in the drawer but it stays there, and somewhere there is wine. Another Friday night and solitude is all I can feel anymore. Today never happened among the ranks of so many others. I thought about going out, for a second, but then I thought of people, who might try to talk to me. Better play it safe. I don’t like excuses, giving them, and they always ask. So I’m giving into that side? You never knew me if you were surprised. Turned off all the lights leaving the glow of the monitor as I thought about writing someone, but no, not tonight. I’m in too honest a mood for that. Instead I read old things I used to like wondering where I was at then, so young, too young.
The phone rings. I watch it light up without noticing the caller. I answered the phone yesterday. It was enough. I like the old songs, and they make me feel like something exists beyond my own thoughts. I believed in a god once, but I don’t know where he went. I was a boy then, and I believed in many things at the time. Now that I’m a man who believes in next to nothing and maybe nothing, am I any better off? Does knowing the truth help, or can you ever know? If I die before I wake, who will read my unfinished book? And those poems? Maybe I should get a safe and hide them. My journals too. Damn they’d be so intrusive going through my things trying to find an answer I left off the pages. That is the one thing I can protect from them. All their searching won’t come close, not even if they knew where to look. Why so focused on death tonight? Is it the darkness? My favorite time of day is when it’s over, and you can sit in the shadows of an electric light. Tonight it’s just my computer and me, but it’s enough.

BETTER THAN THE LAST DAMN THING

You drank vodka not gin, gin tasted like something, and it reminded you of things, which is best to leave alone when you just want to drink. There was a new girl, but it was best to forget her. She looked like trouble when she asked you how she looked, and again? No, it was time for some quiet. A few drinks in quiet, some music, and try to sleep for once. Was it the job, the city, or the girl? Stop thinking about the girl, you’ll never sleep that way. It was time for nothing, not even forgetting. That took too much effort, and you were tired, of even trying. Tomorrow there was enough to do, but for today? There was vodka.

It was so god damned easy when you knew the world, knew what to think. But then you got closer, took a look around. And now? Fuck that, you were fucked up and you knew it, but you didn’t know how, and that was what bothered you. Because if you knew, maybe you could fix it, but like a modern mechanic without his diagnostics set, you were lost or at a loss, however they say it. Damned if I know was a common enough expression, but you were using it, for life with no other means of explaining the world you fell away from. Was it the beginning or the end? Damned if you knew, and maybe you would be, if you did.

You were a gambler, that is to say: a loser, in life and at the game. Even women went faster than chips, but that was it. This was the part you knew. Everything else was a blur, or at least you didn’t focus your eyes enough to see clearly, but why blame you? Who wouldn’t, if they could.