AntiskepticI've been brainwashed. Several somebodies have taken a cerebral antiseptic to the outermost crevices in my head, trying to scrape away my thoughts deemed poisonous. Condemned, pieces on the wrong end of a long finger, almost touching the targeted areas. The finger long and rigid attached to an arm, long and rigid, like that of a cruel king delivering a death sentence. / Scrubbed me clean, they did. They know I am fond of it, so they went deep, taking extra precaution. Scoured. Sent me off, bid me goodwill with farewell kisses, waving handkerchiefs from modest doorways and lattice windows, farewell. Be careful out there, remember all we've taught you from the kindness in our hearts and the space in our pockets, our hungry bank accounts. / Play along, play nice. Let's sit and try to write poetry when it feels like we forgot what it was. Smoke more cigarettes than usual because they're lights and it's the same. Walk to town, around town, back to the second floor to your strange home. Forget how to measure the passing of time without using hours and days. Nothing catches my attention when every minute's watched, waiting for the next small thing to happen. Live a life both empty and full. Miss your friends, experience a dull ache in your chest, then clean away that sad feeling with the next small thing you have to do joy-free. You don't have to like it they say. You just have to do it so I'm told. Just do what you're told. Don't think about how long it's been since you felt alive. Don't think about why you don't feel alive.
Bitter AmusementLet’s drink to memories of purpose. / Let’s drink as a visible testament to our apathy and indifference. Raise our glasses because nothing we do matters in the end, does it. Let’s sit here wasting our time because nothing matters and those who think otherwise are blind and thoughtless. / Can’t they see? Aren’t they too privy to the questions? Do the questions not haunt them in loud lucid thoughts come when breathing is slow and measured, half-studying white ceilings, minds anywhere but in our bodies, eyes open and unseeing, projecting visualized masses of shapeless forms, rendering the ceiling a makeshift screen. Not concrete, solid; ambiguous considerations, ideas swimming through my head, spilling out my mind on to the ceiling where I study them until they’re covered by new ideas and connections formed, fantastic or ordinary. I cease to associate myself with anything but my operating consciousness. Varying degrees of metanalysis and chains linking like sin waves. Tangents everywhere – can’t see the curves obscured by infinite straight lines pointing slightly different directions, solid black blindness forms another canvas onto which I vigorously splash my thoughts like paint or something more violent. Constant reset, overlapping images recycling canvases and backdrops sans intent. This is just what happens.