quintet

nostrum
___


It's the band playing on as an ocean liner slips beneath the waves. It's the sympathetic smile of a friend as you relay your grief. It's that lock on your bedroom window. Reassurance: the only active ingredient in the healing salves sold by travelling snake oil salesmen.

ambush
___


I wanna say that we're more. I wanna say that our luck is more than the sum of our choices, but I'd be a goddamn lier. No better than the liers who run yer country, tellin' ya it's all for the common good. No better than the liers who run yer school, telling ya that yer really gonna be somebody. No better than the liers in the media who tell ya they report without bias. Ha! I wanna tell ya that ya can rely on luck, good or bad, but I won't - 'cause I ain't no goddamn lier.

"Excuse me, sir?"

Whaddaya want?

"Did you know the word 'lier' as you used it does not even exist?"

Whaddaya mean?

"I think the word you're looking for is 'liar'. A lier is one who lies in wait, as in an ambush. Then, there's the French verb, lier, pronounced 'lee-ay', which means 'to bind'. So one who lies, who isn't telling the truth, is not a lier, as such - unless, of course, they happen to be lying in ambush at the time."

Goddamn lier.

choir
___


Randomness will save us, the collective sensibility of countless voices yammering away all at once. Like the phantom patterns which form in a row of blinking signal lights, order will break from chaos and we will stumble into agreeance. But what will we, the ensemble, be singing? What will we be asking through our verse? Who will answer?

subterrane
___


She should've stayed in, lying on the sofa, remote in hand, her face awash with the glow of the future. Unblinking eyes capturing reflections of eternity. Her face warm. A voice would call out from another room: "Do you not find it strange that we are not getting any older?"

With the future flickering, filling up the room, she would think, half-thinking as best as she could, before answering: "Not so much strange as beautiful, I suppose - evenly strangely beautiful."

She dreamt of nothing in that year in which she did nothing. This only makes sense, though, if you ignore everything you've ever learnt about dreams. And everything you've ever learnt about nothing.

phial
___


There are those who are too quick to sully the innocence of art with the arrogance of intellect. Weak, fearful people, they'll cry about objectivity, mumble in their sleep about content or lack thereof. "I need the answers, man," they'll say, shaking, "just gimme the answers, dammit!" They're like addicts, these people, strung out and looking for just one hit - one hit from a drug they've never even used, never even tasted. "You holdin' out on me, man?" So desperate. So pathetic. "I know you got the answers in there somewhere!" Like the walking dead, they're decaying rapidly. And these words, too, shall decay, crumbling even now as I type them.