Sensitive Guy

A Poem by Epistemmy

He’s hunched over the keyboard, outstretched fingers tapping at the keys. Letting them do their own dance, and hoping something good comes of it. But nothing does. Nothing ever does.

His back’s stiff (awful posture!) what would gran say? So of 80 odd 6. ‘You’re young, and a long way to travel yet.’ How to tell her – he sometimes wants to shake her and say. ‘I don’t think you’ve ever felt this old.’

But what of it? Another cliche among so much cynicism and pastiche.

So here he is again, the keys, they’ve danced for a couple of moments. And for a second, it seemed there was something there. But it’s only the dance of pseudo-intellectual de-construction and re-construction. If there was a medical term for it he supposes it would be Semiosis.

‘I have Semiosis of the liver.’

‘Oh dear, how bad is it? How long did they say you’ve got?’

‘A lifetime. A lifetime of bad culture.’

But back to the situation. His walls are still mostly bare, the few half-assed decorations he brought with him when he moved in are still in boxes, crammed in between three-quarter empty diaries and notebooks – journals that never reached escape velocity. There’s probably a couple under the bed too, that forsaken wasteland.

So now he’s got a flag with Che Guevera’s look on it (too pretentious?). There’s a faux stone carving of a Norman Knight, made of flimsy plaster that’s been cracked and re-glued. And a small corkboard, hanging askew, with a couple of outdated cartoons advocating communism and anarchism. (It’s a funny cultural paradigm, when you’re reading literature from a community that takes the necessary destruction of the state as a given.)

And that’s it for decoration. But the room itself is so small it doesn’t really need decorating – that would only add to the appearance of clutter.

There’s an upright rectangle bookshelf, with three shelves toting a mixture of academic textbooks he’s never read, bad fiction he has, and guidebooks to philosophy he can’t.

On top of the bookshelf there’s an empty piggy-bank that’s actually a cow, and has no bottom, as well as a pretty respectable pile of philosophical essays he’s printed on the sly from work. He’s proud of that pile. Whenever anyone’s in his room he points it out to them. He hasn’t read very much of it yet.

Next is the bed that needs its sheets changed. That, at least, would make things less embarrasing for those people that noticed the white stains on the clear navy blue. The sheets are at the bottom of the bed in a messed tangle – he can’t stand sheets. They tangle his legs.

The desk next his bed he is using to type this. Also featuring on the desk: a flat mountain dew from last night, some roll-yer-own cigarettes, an empty packet of Aztec Corn Chips and an ashtray that was a present from a good friend on his 21^st birthday.

The carpet he’s never vacuumed.

There’s a white phone-cord that stands out on the blue carpet snaking its way around everything. It plugs into the back of the computer when he wants to go onto the internet. Another pile of books – more fiction, some of it all right. A couple of ammo-boxes containing more aborted-diaries and journals. A typewriter with an aged ink-ribbon.

And that’s it. That’s his room.