In the middle of the night
I share this poem with you

What do you know
what do you see of me?

A few patches of black
carved in the white of a screen
a few sad words trying to soothe
what is left of me

I live secluded in an apartment
downtown of a half a million souls' city
founded by the Atlantic ocean

I live a cosy and quiet life
sometimes going out to feed myself
and breathe the lousy air of town

Me and my few friends gather once every week
to share a drink
to exchange meaningless thoughts
and useless ideas
around the fate of man
the hopeless prospect of our destiny

We are bachelors around forty
We were born wild and hard
offshoots of the oddest
long gone sycamores
rooted in the most infertile soils

We used to read powerful litterature
Nietzsche, Kafka, Broch,
Joyce, Balzac, Beckett,
Shakespeare, Goethe and Bernhard
to name a few

But none of them has ever helped us out
to find a heart to love
and a pristine soul to care for

All the books we read
have tormented us
with many questions and relentless issues

Now we sit still in our chairs
and watch the clouds go by
hoping for the next blue sky
hoping for the next feeling to come

And never do we ask when...