our lives together, alone

"our lives together, alone"

we are blurs in between moments of neon light.

our drinks sweat alcohol out onto our hands &
we pat each others' shoulders. one of us seduces women
as our mouths swallow more pills in an attempt to find some
semblance of life amongst the mundane lives of fathers,
brothers, children, and wives.

it is easy to mistake the coke for snow, the pills for candy.
they are & we are the children.

we are brothers,
we are brothers,
we are brothers.

one fucks we all fuck
that's the way it's been,
the way it'll always be.

every piece of ass is a different piece of ass but
results in the same kind of metaphysical & carnally
despotic & empirical release.

we are bloodhounds.

we walk between each other, we speak words on top of words just to make sense of every broken thing in our lives. the moment
we realize our lives are not our own, that our lives don't love us, that we are all fucked; fucked in the same way is the moment we stop and melt.

we melt. we melt. we melt.

so i look to the brother on my left & the one on my right & the one in front of me. we depart. days from now, the coffeemaker drips thick black awakeness into a pot in the most simple of manners the most clockwork, the most who the fuck cares because every morning i wake up & don't care don't care don't care. i am dead inside. so are my brothers.

the people i know i watch die as they grow old and i remain in my unending youth, my forty something mind that laughs when an old person falls or when i fuck another man's wife or when i sit in the bath and think of infidelity.

i laugh. we are brothers. we carry the burden of manhood.

why bother concerning ourselves with present adventures when living comes more gracefully from nostalgia, from letters, from polaroids. the humming of the vacuum cleaner bludgeons my skull. it is perverse. i shave and cut my throat.

if i would've pressed deeper and held a knife i would be dead.

i cry in the mirror. nobody hears. everything is silent.
when i am alone, i am alone.

when i am with my brothers we carry each other. i say to myself:
i melt, i melt, i melt, i melt with you.