A patient god

There are nights that darkness holds closer to his heart

And sitting lonely in your room

Will only prove an easy target.

I have, as I think many have, spent nights alone in my room. Alone in my thoughts. Settling down to have a few drinks and watch something funny. Waiting for my roommates to go to bed so I can wander through my apartment completely in the dark. Not bothering to turn on a light, because sometimes it’s fun to let the darkness creep in a little closer to your skin. Your cell phone light to guide you, you start to notice that everything seems so foreign. Couches you once knew so well are brooding angular shapes in the dark, dogs about the pounce. When you finally make it to the kitchen you almost crack, almost hit that light switch. But it doesn’t happen. You realize that there is a power, a calming veil of soft, crisp light that is produced only by the opening of a fridge in a kitchen vaguely illuminated by the filtered moon beams floating in through the window. Oh the sweet sticky pull, how it exacts such rewards. You bask in the cool air a little; feel your skin tightening, on the verge of goose bumps. And just for a funny thought, think for a moment of how it must look through the lens of god. The view a patient god might have, watching a lonely man pour a drink in the middle of the night. Watch him leave the cool oasis for the balcony. Out there in the cool air and the overlapping branches, their sway a cadence of chaotic beats, luring in the eye.

You strike your match. Cup.

And bring it to your face.

And you forgot the damn thing is still tucked neatly behind your ear. There are really two choices in a situation like that. One is you erase it. You shake the match out and grab your cigarette and start over. I made the other choice. You protect the flame from the wind and bring the cigarette over, its first inhaled breath a bigger victory than usual. And you think. You ponder. This is why I always will smoke cigarettes. My addiction to them does not stem from nicotine, but rather; the whims of my emotions and there is no better time to smoke a cigarette than late at night on a breezy blue-veiled balcony by yourself. You think about how your life is going and then realize that you don’t really care. As long as you can still press finger to keyboard—put pen to paper. Because a writer and loneliness go hand in hand like two young lovers. There is a detachment from society that exists within you. There is a part of you that can take complete isolation better than most. Can forget all about people and become a god—a patient god. And the characters you create actually exist. Some of the best words are written slowly in the creeping minutes after midnight.

Kafka probably had nights like these.

Thinking of him, a begin to write…

Death

If light so fierce, could somehow pierce,
This Apathetic Pall,
A single gleam, this mired dream,
Might not survive withal,

Conversely if such, sunlight be crushed,
As finger pressed to keyhole,
The darkness might do, and again imbue,
The dreams that hope doth stifle,

Be light be dark, produce the spark,
Or pull out the fuse ‘together,
There is no fix, in saving wicks,
For disagreeable weather,

I’ve tried to stave, this shallow grave,
With hope for one more song,
But shoveled dirt, will only skirt,
The casket for so long.

Brief Moments...

The fickle promise of rain in this late-summer heat seemed to laugh at the dying lawns, small and boxed off by stone and brick and step, sweeping down the avenue. The green licks of grass were slowly thinning out into islands amongst the browning, cracked majority. Cars bunched together upon the narrow street took the brunt of the sun, shimmering like dull gems, tangentially refracting small beams of light into the shadowed porches, sighing in the lazy darkness. One such beam caught John across the eyes, causing him to shift of out the way. It brought back memories of dusty classrooms and bored kids angling watches at teacher’s faces.
“I’m horrible in the heat, man. I sweat like a pig.” John’s roommate Philip Quane was leaning against the wooden banister that separated their duplex porches, quickly smoking a cigarette. John thought about bringing up the thought he had about watches, but caught himself, pointing out silently in his head how random a thing it would be to bring up, without context anyway. Instead, he laughed shortly, barely making a sound. “What are you doing tonight?”
“I don’t know. I got nothing planned, really.”
“Maybe catch a movie?”
“What movie?” Both young men paused to think about this, to roll through their mental list of titles. Both young men drew blanks. “Is there anything On Demand, you think?”
“Maybe. It’s fucking summer. This is when movies are supposed to come out, right? Movies worth seeing?” Their cigarettes, smoked nearly down to their filters, were flicked one at a time outward. The crushed, tumbling objects flitted onto the sidewalks. The two roommates went inside.