Boredom

Loneliness. I wake up to a silent day. Coffee and the newspaper. Somebody dead, a thousand dead, somebody won and somebody murdered. Not a flicker on my face. I fold the paper and down my coffee.

Breakfast time. TV. Silicone, murders and pop. I am so bored. I look at my watch and it tells me that there are another twelve hours to kill. I pick a book flip a page, and toss it away.

Should I kill myself ? Maybe death holds some meaning. Maybe I'd feel something then.

Lunch - Chicken. I used to enjoy eating. Now its a task. Death, pain I think again. Maybe.

Night. Dinner is on the table, but I am not interested. I sit at the table and watch my blood pool on the floor below. Interesting color. The sharp ache on my wrist has dulled to a throbbing. I am so bored. Its getting dark. Did I not turn the lights on earlier ?

Oh.

So this is it. But I feel nothing. I was supposed to feel something. Damn.

free falling

Exhaling, I lean back. Nothing fills my head, a white noise really, a blend of many babbling thoughts. The noise soon fades and my mind floats away. Staring ahead, I try to blink away fleeting ghost patterns that haunt my tired eyes. Shaking my head, I jerk back upright, trying to clear my head off a fog that is fast threatening to overwhelm me. But the sudden movement only serves to pitch my head forward and I am too far gone to resist. "Just two minutes", I promise myself and lay my head down on the table. Lingering I try to remember something. Something I had promised myself just a moment before. Something, something ...

And a sudden "But only in their dreams can men be truly free. 'Twas always thus and always thus will be" flutters in from somewhere, a dying sputter of a thought. But that is the last and I am pulled in. Pulled into a free fall.

this soldier

A common foot soldier I am and I wield the pen. I was not always a soldier. I was once a common man, looking in from outside. Looking in onto the plain white, afraid to step in. But this battle is a free for all and so I was given my pen and asked to go forth and conquer words. Lay siege to adjectives, capture verbs and bring down paragraphs, sonnets, verses and prose.

Glory and literary acclaim, supposedly await me. Lines such as the pen is mightier than the sword are concocted to help me along. For inspiration I have a whole range of masters. From mere Knights to veritable Gods. People whose prowess with words, words are insufficient to express. Masters and mistresses of form, wit and dialogue, of satire, of drama and powerful intellect. Weavers of new worlds, builders of kingdoms, spawners of demons and dragons. As a foot soldier I look up and upon them and to their victories, legends that I strive to emulate, as I try to shape these words to my ideas.

Are the words there first or are the ideas ? I do not know. They are both at the same time. Without words, I do not know if I would have ideas and of ideas I do not know of any other kind. And yet, once the idea and the words that make it appear, I am able to discern a difference and make the idea be of other words, better words perhaps. More lucid words. Ah lucidity. Every moment on the battlefield, I strive to make my verbs and nouns and prepositions be where they are meant to be. I try to fashion vehicles for my thoughts and emotions, vehicles which will transport and deliver, without much ado to themselves. I do not often succeed.

Millions fight this war. The war remains the same, though the battle has spread to newer arenas, away from the traditional paper and away from the pen being the only weapon. A universe now exists composed of letters, words and lines uncountable, immeasurable. And in this immensity, a common foot soldier, I plod on. Oblivious to the tumult of humour, satire, poetry and prose around me, I am busy in an attempt to leave behind the only things about me that will remain. My body will perish, memories of me will fade, but my words, they will be about. That I was once. That, borrowing from Whitman, I existed, life went on, and these here were my verses.

Particularly weary, I realize that the sun has set on this days battle. So I clear a space on my desk and lay my pen down.