Unwinding the Thread from the Spool

The price of gas goes up and down
while alcohol is affordable enough
to keep you just behind the line of insanity.

Truth does not need a pretty image
or metaphor to convey it's message.

Truth is blunt like a sledgehammer
breaking bricks into bits.

The road drives me numb and mad
in alternating measure.

A young man pulled out his hand
like a gun and pointed at me

and I was furious. Not at the threat
of violence and death

but at the demands of our ill times
on us all

and the prospect of my future
becoming a severed branch.

I'm drinking alone because
I need this meditation

even if the methodology is flawed.
I would be with you tonight

if only we were not so far apart
you and I.

I don't wish to die
but I need to prove to myself

the will to live and smash
apart the lingering grasp

of my self-doubt.

Broken Gauge In A Gas Crisis

He was pining for something that didn't exist.
In all likelihood, it was something that had never existed.
This was both comfort and pain.
Intangible constructs, memory, longing,
the sources of so much anguish,
the heart of so much Art,
part of the condition borne by simply being.
The sun barreling through your window,
forcing a squint,
your eyes adjusting to radiant force.
Sound strains over echoes of empty streets.
Has he missed the boat on Love, normalcy,
sanity? Faces so happy to proselytize the good life
while offering you none in return.
Oh, how he wished he were beautiful,
how he wished he could sing with a voice
fit for a choir of angels.
How he wishes each word he wrote
could live a life immortal from his own.
He pined for the absence of absence,
a needful togetherness, a touch that is inimitable,
a kiss that is connectable, a love that is infallible.
Instead, the fretted typing of a fundamental lack,
that which pains and propels. Such fuel is of indeterminate
sustenance. One thing is sure, it is bound to run out.
The gauge is broken, only the sputtering sounds
of a run down engine will let us know for sure.