beauty of apathy

i sit and look out
as walt floats by
on a little schooner
holding an umbrella
to protect him
from the sun's evil rays.
he puffs a cigar.
the smell reminds me
of chocolate and walnuts,
and of sunday afternoons
my dad spent reading
in the living room.

i look back to the blank page
splayed empty
on my desk.
i drop the pen
and it falls into the sand.
i dig around on the ground,
but all i find
is more and more grains
of cold sand.
it falls through my fingers
as my hands turn blue.

time passes
and the shadow of the lonely mountain
comes over me
like sleep after a long day.
the dragon emerges.
his enormous wings
kill whatever light
the shadow couldn't.
the thought of his flesh
chills my body
in ways the ground cannot.
ice covering the garage door
after a hard winter storm.

academics flock down marble halls
stroking their dust colored beards
and adjusting their bifocals.
they parade into the cattacombs
to bring out the corpses.
to shake the dirt and maggots
away from their hero's faces,
so they can hold them up
to candle light.
after they thumb through a page or two
of definitive editions
the light is extinguished
and the dead go back to the ground
for another year.

i spend another night
drinking cold cans of beer
blocking out the world with headphones
until the ghosts show up
and tell me to do something
with my life.
i'm the monkey at the typewriter
flipping blindly
at concepts i will never understand,
but hoping no one notices.