Absence

My last post was about loneliness. This one is too. But this one has nothing to do with the theoretical or poetic aspects of the term. This is about a deeply ingrained conglomeration of circumstances and moments that contain an absence. Yes, to contain an absence, kind of like a shell without its oysters, a body without its soul, love without sex, or sex without love. Loneliness is not emptiness, is an absence. The difference is that emptiness denotes a void, unfathomable, infinite, a black hole impossible to fill. An absence implies a presence that was once and is not anymore.

An empty promise, a smile that signifies that a person has moved on, a human shell filled with emotions that want to burst but is unable to, because there’s no one to receive its contents…that is an absence. What was once and is no more.

Alone

I type loneliness and get the technical definition
“the state of being alone”

it doesn’t address its causes or consequences
the perennial injunction against socialization

the ever spreading recognition that
for all the warm bodies and the incertitude of pets

I am alone
It is a feeling, alone, unique, a state as it should be

And for all the crisscrossing emails
And enveloping cathodes of nuanced telecommunications
For every one of those little cameras perched on top of your
Computer monitor

Lone, alone, solitude, all the synonyms and metaphors,
All remain.

Alone

Such a lonely word.

Doughnut Days

It‘s happening again. I call them doughnut days, days when I feel something’s missing. That something is the center.

I remember my favorite book, Hopscotch, and that phrase about looking for a center. Those are the doughnut days, when you feel something missing, when the banalities of everyday life, the ones that give a temporary sensory overload that mimics a center wash away and leave you breathlessly empty.

I look around, with that familiar sense o f un-belonging Must be the weather: this feeling froze during the snowstorms and now I thaws, bringing with it the usual, diaphanous certitude that for all it’s worth, it is worthless.

Days like this I try something different to make me feel better. Today, I will eat a doughnut. It sits here, close to my right hand, ready to be devoured. The center is almost closed with sugar and coconut bits, but it’s still there, a hole in the middle, the gravitational apparatus that keep the doughnut together. Close it and it’s no longer a doughnut. It’s something else, like me, without a center.

Other days I drink more alcohol, or drink more coffee. Used to be writing was my center, the one thing that would bring me some peace. But now the other aspects of life swirl irresponsibly around my shortened attention span, and even writing lags behind. Even reading. I hadn’t read a book in a long time. I picked this one up at Barnes and Noble. “Italian Shoes” by some Scandinavian author. So far it is dark and depressing, ominous really, something about settling old scores, something about keeping old promises.

Maybe that’s my emptiness, broken promises.

But my coffee gets cold, and the doughnut want to be eaten.

Back to the hole, like the groundhog.

Six more weeks of darkness.

Unbound

tic toc

so much shit unbound

so much illness

is it mojo, voodoo

the accusation is my foul mood

by dark energy

me, it's all random, right?

no need to invoke the divine

in the events of entropy

randomness divine!

unbound

such a nasty word

decode it and you'll find

just sadness

there's an unmailed email

shall it disappear?

why send it when it will be

unread

or unbound

or nonsense

or selfserving

or punitive

or just sad.

Still unbound I suppose

in my inbox

do I press send?

will you resent it?

or delete it?

tic toc

so much shit unbound

do I want to know?

Don't I know?

Do you?