What is sex without a respected friendship that transcends lust? And what is poetry without the muse that moves you to write it? People have relationships without the duty of remembrance. They hold hands, comfort and expect the same in those they love. It doesn’t happen, it isn’t that simple and it can’t be done without heartache. We have drinks and sex, but when we walk away instead, we lose on something valuable. This was the way we believed the world to be, almost inconsiderate enough to forget each other after sharing even a passing word. But it was every day interactions that made things easier to criticize, watching television and feeling for yourself like a five minute session alone and a hand, deciding on careless wandering, while knowing that falling in love should’ve had an access code. Mine is zero. So the evenings came and there was us, who expected nothing, who wanted everything; stepping out into the unforgiving night, poetry under arm and a taste for dry martinis –to soothe some angry souls. Neither of us smile, we strut, we writhe, aimless talk to politics and conspiracy theories as the sleeping world marched by to the beat of the same drum. We were deaf, but listened carefully for the sound of a sigh, the pin drop of opportunity. I was twenty-four years old and tired, we had been dragging a label meant to express our progressive views on the universe without thinking that it would affect the way we cared for one another. But taken as temporary rebellion or mainstream counterculture, coming of age it wasn’t the sixties out there, this freedom was not new and we walked into it knowing it was ours. We had been “marketed and commercialized” before we could say grunge and sometime during the reality of death and missing each other while standing in line, we were older, but alive. We had survived that cynical storm, the few of us that didn’t buy it, kept thinking we were artists, philosophers, even. Contemplating GOD on train stations, after sex, while being handcuffed and booked and coming up with nothing. We discuss this, Nietzsche, possibility, maybe UFO’s because we’re here and we’ve got a few questions. But that’s a secret, mate, marks and sub-labels hide the simple truth, we are all searching and afraid. The best storm shelter I was never told is in someone’s arms; someone naked, someone true. If only it was that simple, an express check-out for that perfect fit true and pure perfection as a well-placed metaphor between angry lines of poetic salvation. Save me! I’m lost and sick, carrying the weight of another generation in haste. No one rushes through plate-glass windows, no one even knocks, no one calls. So we go back into the night, blending in with the Nembutals breathing our precious air, wearing our insignificant contradictions. There we are sitting in corners growing just one year older, whispering Revolution! Plotting escapes, we have no idea where to go. Yet, something amazing starts to happen when two lost souls begin to “hatch a plan,” without realizing it, we have begun to save each other. Artists, writers, people that get it especially, forge bonds through emotional torture, whether they’ve been tortured or just have a knack for pain. Either way we pair up, we look at each other one of those nights and through it all, we would like to believe.
