Four thirty a.m.,
and sleep has slipped through my clutches again.
My fingers keep dawdling over a book of poetry
going through maybe six or seven
until it seems only a minute has passed.
Then somehow I find myself making love
to papers with some old pen,
tired of trying to form intelligent words
into something seeming meaningful,
and just get down to the point,
if there’s even a point at all
like some chewed up forsaken pencil.
There was a poem about one of my favorites,
The Stranger by Camus,
it was like I was the poet as he spoke to me,
kissing me gently with his words.
He, too, liked The Stranger
because he saw beyond trying or caring,
doing so was just a senseless bore,
with life being an empty shit-hole in the ground.
Mother would say
it’s so unladylike to act such a way,
but I’ve already morphed into something
like The Stranger so long ago.
So to hell with society’s rules, and double standards
eating way at the people like an unnoticed parasite,
but then I remember
he never had a love worth life,
neither The Stranger or that poet.
Maybe that’s what we all really need.