Lonely Coals

[lovingpenfull]

Look at that rosy bed of coals, heating no hands nor
noses, disused and lonesome, whose life escapes and
dissipates into tight mountain night; I saw this pile
of coals burning in the street and no one cared to
stand around it, it is so cold and there is this oasis
of heat, but no one wants to use it, and I felt a
little like that little sorry pile of coals, a bright
sun in an ocean of absolute zero, yet asking: where's
my planetary sister whose wax I can melt? I had this
friend, and we were good pals despite his
fundamentalism and then I met this one gal and she was
nice enough and then they met each other through me
and then they kind of squeezed me out of the picture,
got together they did, I see them only in snippets
here and there now for minutes at a time. Meanwhile I
met a Japanese girl, she and I sleeping in the same
bed for warmth against the cold nights, I not
advancing toward intimacy because she doesn't pass the
test: if the condom breaks and she gets pregnant,
could I stay with her for 18 years? Her personality
is a little dumpy and her physique a bit frumpy, if I
may be judgmental for a minute here, and so we keep it
just to body warming our nights together, and then I
meet a cool Indian guy and we are good friends and
this evening after being out I come back to my dorm room
and I find a note our pillow telling me that the
Japanese girl and the Indian guy are at the Indian
guy's room and that I should stop by. I didn't know
they knew each other; so I go down and I knock and I
get an, 'ah, were kind of busy now', ah, who left who
a letter asking who to come down to who's room, here?
It turns out that the India guy knew about my Japanese
bed warmer just by my talking about her and so he
swooped in and charmed her back to his room. Great,
but inviting me down and then turning me away was
anoying. Two couples have come together
now through me, it must just be my place in the cosmos
at this time to act as a catalyst to the coming
together of others. I didn't really like that gal,
but she had been sharing a bed with me and it is a
little depreciating to think that she didn't even have
a second thought about me before running off with that
guy; I didn't want to be with her, but she didn't know
that. And so, I am like that little pile of coal in a
way, just burning away and nobody wants me, just let
me smoke into the sky and either find another fire or
remain cold just out of reach of me. There are scores
of folk in this town and around the world sleeping
alone night to night, and it just boggles me that I am
one of them when I don't really want to be...and now
enough of the bellyaching, if I wanted one bad enough
I should put myself out there and ask around and that
is how you get them, isn't it? But really twice now I
have known these girls that run off with my friends,
neither I really wanted in any meaningful way, but
they just used me as a conduit to my guy
friends....Anyways, say a prayer for the hard working people, say a prayer for their back breaking work, say a prayer for the good and the evil, say a prayer for the salt of the earth