The hypnotic affecting extremism at its apogee paused to smoke a
cigarette while the fulcrum groaned as the smoke gave warning that
the night ended and the long day ahead was about to begin; as it
began hurtling downward, flicking the still glowing butt aside, like
so many grim-faced hotel rooms, oddly black and white in a world
that can only imagine rainbows, it’s message gaining momentum
while opposing forces, raging at the loss of its friction on the public
consciousness, braced itself as its stomach churned because the
bottom had fallen out of its idealistic pilgrimage; the survival of
good conversation, a flowing flute, bottled wine with old corks
never seemed to concern itself with the lack of compromise; it
was only the death of pay phones and taxis, like a miscarriage,
creating momentary pause, that remembered what it was like to
once matter only to be abandoned because life is only about how
arrogance, no matter its source, vicarious or self-induced, a tooth-
pick in its mouth, unimpressed because cynicism held tightly to
the rope, swinging it, not out of convenience, but because it
enjoys toying with outrage, unsentimental, bored with itself and
in need of a ticket for the show; while a poet looked on, consumed
with right and wrong; whether to be a pacifist or a realist, to be
patriotic or humanistic no matter nationality, to be the writer
or the book, to accept that evil must be vanquished or to merely
lament the human condition; he knew the love of beautiful words
meant nothing to a world on fire; to a hit man trying to finish
what he first shot was unable; to a poor man sleeping under the
thin blanket of speeches and promises; to a child, terrified by
blinding light and deafening explosions; only the mindless
idealist could love these words, yet was it truth or was it only
a selfishly clever principle that pointed in one direction no
matter yesterday’s accusations that became todays justification;
would it be that he cast aside contemplation for his own gun;
to become the killer or the hand that turns off the sound of the
montone ekg, so that the world might not be aware of the
necessary evil of killing evil; but what would truth say as the
pendulum races past prudence, towards an equilibrium not
in balance with virtue but instead with revenge and opportunism;
what should he say about that; who would listen to his blood
stained pen, witness of his own atrocities, killing his own
voice, once full of peaceful assurance about the good within
the hearts of men; who would listen to the shrugging shoulders
of a rebuilt poem, to be told to children and those who wish
to think of the things that powerful men destroy as history
has always insisted must be so; who would listen to the naïve
man who had a way of arranging emotions at will; who would
listen as another hypnotically extreme apogee lit another cold
hearted cigarette, without a filter, because what would be the
point of that; there was none; decency could not survive hell
and its lungs could not survive the slow death anyway; it
became a matter of feeling the fire from the inside, so that the
words meant something to somebody because they would
know that a life of pain was the only way to reach the point
of meaning; a sort of constant face full of inspiration as he
took his seat next to the fulcrum that remained alone, unable
to speak because nobody cared to listen or reason anymore;
it didn’t seem to matter; only that beautiful words had to live
live for itself and for those who wanted to feel that way for
a moment; but he knew, that lies and compromises lived
silently, because flowers do not grow in desert sand and a
poet who closes his eyes is like a baby with a rattle in its hand