Today feels like
the "
end of the world"
party.
The morning is
too real.
Sunlight chisels
the landscape,
honing detail razor sharp.
Sound is like a phonebook
upside the head
and the breakfast joints are jumping
with shaky fingers
and pale faces
kicking back cancer
with caffeine chasers.
Talk is on how
we jimmied the lock
on Pandora's box
and let chaos loose
last night.
Whether we planned
to live forever,
or die tomorrow
we carried on the same.
We are people full of
unfinished todays
and indebted tomorrows
and last night
it was to hell with it all
as we bojangled along
sidewalks of trouble
pushed by the moon
and the gut-emptiness of
desperation and hard luck.
We lashed out wild
at great invisible giants
but hit home,
family,
and friends instead.
And so today
our churches are full of
silent repentance.
Shame,
The incense hanging...
and our beds are full
of fitful sadness sleeping,
and we are afraid to wake
to remember
how we hurt
the only people
who ever truly took us in,
and we still taste
and smell
the strangers
gone from the sheets
beside us
and feel foolish
for believing
we could cure
a lifetime's worth
of loneliness
in just one night,
and the toilets
are rank
with red wine
as a week of upheaval
finally shows itself
for what it is.
And I walk through
the Saturday night litter
of Sunday morning.
The condoms,
the socks stiff with glue,
the needles,
the pipes
and paraphernalia
are party favours
for the apocalypse,
and the day will drag on
in spite of
our stopped hearts,
and dusk will come again
like a slow,
certain
blindness,
and whether we planned
to live forever
or die tomorrow
what we have done
and seen
will never be enough,
and we will rail against
ourselves
one last time.
My part of town
knows how to do it right -
how to party
like it's the end of the world.
- S.R. Duncan, posted by permission.