Ohio City At Night Geoffrey Landis

UPON REACHING ABSOLUTE ZERO

All we know is what we choose to believe
All we do is what we choose to achieve
All we regret is what we choose to aggrieve
All we retain is what we choose to receive

It’s all so simple / why make it too confusing
To understand / too grandiose to comprehend
To rhyme or not / to arrange in pretty patterns
Pretty words that mean nothing when nothing

Is all you have left

KE

 

GRAVEYARD

When I ran the business
all by myself
(after my partner was
out of it ), I learned
it was pretty lonely at the top.

In the plant,
late afternoon sun
filters in thru sooty windows,
casts long shadows
on unlit work-weathered floor.
A few presses remain,
sold for pennies on the dollar,
wait to be lifted from their old home,
strapped on a flatbed
to be scrapped, to be dead.
Until then they stand there,
obelisks in a graveyard.
So guess what?
It’s pretty fucking lonely
at the bottom, too….

Loren Weiss