Van Gogh cut off his ear
gave it to a
*******
who flung it away in
extreme
disgust.
Van, ****** don't want
ears
they want
money.
I guess that's why you were
such a great
painter: you
didn't understand
much
else.

the flesh covers the bone
and they put a mind
in there and
sometimes a soul,
and the women break
vases against the walls
and the men drink too
much
and nobody finds the
one
but keep
looking
crawling in and out
of beds.
flesh covers
the bone and the
flesh searches
for more than
flesh.

there's no chance
at all:
we are all trapped
by a singular
fate.

nobody ever finds
the one.

the city dumps fill
the junkyards fill
the madhouses fill
the hospitals fill
the graveyards fill

nothing else
fills.

I've begun to question the very purpose of my existence.
Which is really just a fancy way of saying ''I've been reading too much Albert Camus.''

The only way to enjoy one's life is to accept the Absurd.
To accept that life has no meaning except for the meaning I give it.
No purpose other than the purpose I wish it to have.  
Belief in God is absurd because there is no way to verify his existence.
Belief in the absence of God is absurd because there is no way to verify it.
Trying to believe anything spiritually is absurd because spirits are not science and anything that is not science cannot be verified and is therefore absurd.
Life is absurd.
The purpose of life is reproduction, survival.
Or so it has been verified by science.
Spiritually though, there is no purpose because everything is a purpose.

against the wall, the firing squad ready.
then he got a reprieve.
suppose they had shot Dostoevsky?
before he wrote all that?
I suppose it wouldn't have
mattered
not directly.
there are billions of people who have
never read him and never
will.
but as a young man I know that he
got me through the factories,
past the ******,
lifted me high through the night
and put me down
in a better
place.
even while in the bar
drinking with the other
derelicts,
I was glad they gave Dostoevsky a
reprieve,
it gave me one,
allowed me to look directly at those
rancid faces
in my world,
death pointing its finger,
I held fast,
an immaculate drunk
sharing the stinking dark with
my
brothers.