The Insis-Persis-Temptation of Optimism

He can sit in his hall all he wants,
And sit he will, because that's what he wants, what he wants;
The silence of tomorrow,
The silence of today,
The loneliness but the comfort,
He shoots heroin without a needle,
He shoots his snide bullets at people, he can hardly remember the names,
Or the places or the faces,
Or the times or the thoughts,
Or the this or the that but he carries on because it's what he's got,
He traded everything for this.

In a one room apartment, on a one room street,
In a one room town on a one room world he is safe,
He hides from the thrusts and parries of dialogue,
Of the drops and tallies he takes,
And all the friends he fails to make.

Alone is a verb when the word is done not been,
And in solitude there is nothing to be sought,
And the creeping dust of dissent seeps into a mind,
And emptiness has turned his eyes blind,
And sorrow twisted his finers to claws,
And silence has locked his broken jaw.

And the static of the TV crackles on channel nothing,
Like a tiger's purr it promises invitation and violence,
But it never promises silence.

And his only sheet is black, and his name is despair,
And he doesn't see the trees and he doesn't breathe the air,
And he isn't wanted here and he doesn't want to be there,
And he calls a glance and smile a stare,
He thinks in suspicion and he deals in quarts,
But he's alone with only his sighs and his thoughts.

Because hope is what made us and keeps us on,
Children's films and erotic novels teach us the insistence of optimism,
And Salvador Dali scratched out the persistence of memory,
And the Bible lists the first temptation,
And they all exist in the same place, the same sphere of being and existent remedies.

So don't make sense of it,
And don't lose faith in it,
Because it's the only one we've got,
And we'll never get another.




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