Poems
by George Gad Economou
Dead is the Night
old night dead
within the shadows
echoes of long lost
memories and ghosts
forgotten like
oh so many more
moments of drink
drowning in the
bottom of
another glass-pipe
broken on the floor
too much heat
the needle couldn't take it
her faint smile her soft laughter
where are you? can you
even see me now and tomorrow
like yesterday when we held each other
the moments were never lived
all lies untold
tales of illegitimate daughters
of masturbating gods buried
and burned
like sacrificial
scapegoats and lambs;
could we have ever learned how to breathe?
from afar the train,
a single car on
the long, proud highway.
RUN! RUN!! RUN
!!!
we couldn't leave
abandon the few known
the many unknowns
whereto and wherefrom,
cries of echoes lost
shadows forgotten
smiles and broken
needles
hearts
the mending of wounds suffered
eons ago,
when earth was young
and the night still old.
forget her,
forgive me,
talk to you and yours;
move along nothing
to see the train
takes another ride
one more unexplored
route destroyed,
like all the forests
burned down like
8balls
of speed.
and the mornings are
never;
before, now, and after.
are you still out there,
dreaming?
thinking?
believing?
I'm not,
you're not.
they're not.
who is?
the night is old,
dead within.
shadows and ghosts.
it's all that remained
after the first bomb was dropped
and dreams ceased to be real.
routine
another dawn, soon Ill sit
in a bus, listening to country music and avoiding
the ghouls empty gawks. Im
still in this place, for reasons no one
knows. inside a dull, sterile classroom, wasting
hours not drinking, not losing
myself in the sweet fog of substances.
hopes extinguished, lurching into
the routine, trying to encapsulate the essence of what
drove people forth for centuries; failing. pointlessness
girdles me, emptiness engulfs
the world. a desire burns in my
heart to run, to get the fuck
away. the materialization of my
dreams remains nothing but a
junk hallucination. in the Bar Ill walk, one
day, and rediscover what was
left behind. until that
glorious day, the box wine in the fridge
must suffice, strong gin and tonics will have to replace
the nights I didnt go to a bar. its
alright. I cannot live, nor do I
wish to. its only primordial instinct that
forces me to draw
each breath. a voice keeps rising
from the page, commanding me to
keep going, telling me that
pieces of my soul are still
intact and need to be
absorbed by the page before I
embark on my last journey; Im
circumnavigating, an empty vessel searching for
the deepest, remotest spot wherein
to sink.
a plea to the gods
sometimes, I think of
the old bulldog sitting alone
somewhere in bunker hill, trying to break into
Hollywood and mailing long
letters to the lion of literature. sometimes, I
think of the dirty old man, the superlative divine
teacher of us
all, scratching his ass in a filthy flophouse,
guzzling beer and grinning at the
stockpiles of rejection slips. would they have
given my words a second gander, if I hadnt
arrived in the world
belatedly? would they think
my lines worthless, my sentences
atrocious? no way of
knowing, I just swill down
a cold beer, fire up the glass pipe, and console
myself at the thought of the great bar
in the sky, the potential meeting with
the heroes over pitchers of icy beer and
cases of red wine.
the dancer
out of the page she leaped, started
dancing on the
coffee tablesnaking her way around
piles of books, bags of blow and junk,
cartons of cigarettes.
a sea of empty bottles on the floor,
she wobbled around them, perfect
rhythm, suitable for the Bolshoi.
the walls closed insqueezing the air out
of the roomand she kept on
dancing, her body glistening from the sweat.
even in absolute darkness, she remained refulgent.
out of the nicotine-stained walls appeared
nightmarish heads, guffawing before
vanishing. from the shelves books fell,
the floor transmogrified into a treacherous sea of books, bottles,
and dry tobacco
her high heel pierced a plastic bag of blow, a mushroom
cloud rose up in the air, dissipated before
it could be snorted. a non-existent gust
flung the windows open, then slammed them shut.
clowns sauntered through the door, hurling pies at
each other with maniacal chortles.
no end in sight for the madness, she danced
all night long while the walls
kept on closing inoxygen depleted, drinks
spilled.
she emerged out of the page, strutted into
the night and never left.
the grotesque heads reappeared, just to give off
another cachinnation. the windows were locked,
junk injected in the arm;
it dawned, she still danced,
nothing but a skeleton oscillating amidst
books and bottles, while a
pool of whiskey and blood soaked
the floor, stained the clothes, and
sustained
the soul.
weekend
another long, brutal weekend of
hard drinking, with brief intermissions of
insightful hangovers. another chance to
reevaluate life, another opportunity not to
learn anything new.
its a lesson I fail to grasp, the weekends
finale approaches, I learned nothing new.
another tedious week commences, more struggles
as the routine returnswaiting for friday, so that
proper liquoring up can recommence.
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