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 I’ll sit

in a bus, listening to country music and avoiding

the ghouls’ empty gawks. I’m

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.

hope’s 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 I’ll 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 didn’t go to a bar. it’s

alright. I cannot live, nor do I

wish to. it’s 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; I’m

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 hadn’t

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 table—snaking 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 in—squeezing the air out

of the room—and 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 in—oxygen 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.

it’s a lesson I fail to grasp, the weekend’s

finale approaches, I learned nothing new.

another tedious week commences, more struggles

as the routine returns—waiting for friday, so that

proper liquoring up can recommence.

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