“You and I”
he says,
“we're meant for better things than this.”

When I ask him what he means
he says,
“we've been holding this factory up
for the last seven years-
look at you:
you look like ****.
You're ******* twenty-six
and you look like you've
gone at least two years
without regular ***;
always staying in to catch up on lost sleep,
but you forget about all the hours
you've lost in between.
When was the last time you made love
to anything other than yourself?
When was the last time you drank a beer
to start up the evening,
rather than to **** the night?”

When I told him
that it's not like I'm a boring ****,
he agreed and
he says,
“no, no, and that's the issue,
that's why, you and I,”
he says,
“you and I,
need to get out of this place.
Haven't you ever just thought
about walking out?
Like the money ain't enough
to keep you tethered to what you do?”

I answered yes, of course,
and that it's like the common cold;
it's a load of horseshit,
but it won't **** you too often.
To that he says,
“we gave seven years to make money for someone else,
and we got ourselves what we wanted...”

He was right,
as we drove up to our old spot
in our company 4 X 4.
He lit up the joint
as we looked over the old railway bridge and
he says,
“we used to come here all the time when we were kids.
Spit down to the bottom,
watch it splash into the floodwater
around New Year's.
We had our first cigarette,
and then our next and then our next...”

he zoned out and we fell to silence,
smoking by the old haunt
and not for the first time it occurred to me
how much I can live like a ghost at times.
Even now I was passive
as someone echoed my daydreams
with psalms of escape;
even now, at this featherbed point,
I slip into a conservative's tongue
and express my comfort in the working day
and feeling over-the-hill,
despite all the conversations similar to this
that I have rehearsed so passionately
inside my head.
After a while
he says,
“you and I,
we're better than this.
Better than this drug
or this routine bliss;
better than a monthly slip
that disappears on rent,
or popular thoughtstreams
that make no sense.

“You and I,
we're different than most.
We hold onto happiness
like sand in our palms,
dispersing it everywhere we go
without ever having enough for ourselves,
or concentrating it on anyone important;
we just spend it like we spend our money-
on all of the escapism to forget
that our lives are a lie-
a pie-in-the-sky theory
that says we have to work hard
to live happy...”

He stopped,
gave a watery smile
and he says to me,
“You and I
are similar,
but you are younger
and kinder than me.
Get out of here
and find that slower life,
before you begin to see what happens
when you grow into your apathy...”

With that he turned
and walked off the edge
of the bridge as if he was
slipping out for a ****.
He slipped out of life
without another word.
Maybe he thought he was a bird,
that he would find some wings
at the bottom of a tragic fall;
either way he is gone
and only his words remain,
in the lazy imagination
of a young stoner's brain.