Otiosity



Only 18, but so fucking old
In the place of my soul is a gaping hole
Cannot feel hope pain sorrow or anything
60 more years of waiting, what will they bring?
Idleness and restlessness, sitting in a broken chair, staring at my living quarters
Cluttered and dilapidated, full of squalor
But what’s the point of cleaning it up, so I’m not even going to bother
Every paper has a coffee ring adorning it
Here’s a pen with a phone number scrawled on it
Phone out of batteries, better recharge it, but I know I won’t get up
Not even to take away the empty bowls of ice cream
Anyway it will be sans juice again tomorrow
Or the next day, ça m’est égal
Steinbeck’s tortoise is faster than this
Burned cd’s are all over the floor, I just stepped on one
But it changes nothing, hardly registers in my mind
Piles of papyrus and half-finished projects
Testimony to the time when I had motivation
All out of order now, expired efforts
Into a mélange of misery, inglorious sepulcher of debris
I could go to bed, it’s 3 in the morning but I don’t feel tired
March 8 2004, Reading the New York Times but not absorbing it
14 flickering flames snuffed out in the Gaza Strip today, yet I feel nothing
After the Israelis withdrew at midmorning, a hole four feet deep and six feet across gaped in Salahadin Road between the camps,
where militants had detonated a mine.
Trapped in a thought prison, killing those minutes
Looking at nothing, mindlessly cataloging company logos
SAMSUNG in gray across the printer
FUJIFILM on a freshly pirated compact disc
SONY Minidisc Player, haven’t used it in years
PANASONIC instruction manual for God knows what trinket of accursed technology
The writing is in Japanese, and why do the Japanese print everything in caps?
All these material possessions surrounding me
Drifting away from humanity, Only making it harder to relate
I think I’ve lost something of myself to these modern artifacts, bloodsucking machines
This matter without substance because I can see through it
Emotions insulated I am so far removed
Carrying on a conversation is laborious, so hard to pay attention to anything or anyone
I hope this itinerary of detachment and apathy is going somewhere interesting
I wonder if you can measure emotion in digits and bytes?

8 March 2004