the empty page

The empty page is future snow, densely layered cloud. A sun-flash around a curve. Dozing off face down in your own personal mountain of cocaine.

The empty page is the bottom of the pile on fourth down in a jovial but in all respects earnest pickup game at a Klan rally. The bullet's flash, the sudden crash, the light you go to and are pushed to at first sight. A microscope awaiting chance paramecia, a room waiting to catch fire.

Cauterized memory, the names of people forgotten, promises unkept, the list of lies that never came to light, wasted time or future time, that same snowfield as one to be traversed in an ill-advised quest for meaning still probably best to pursue.

Fuck the empty page, the empty page is fear, paralysis, silence chosen to avoid risk. Filler to deceive a reader re> gravity. Dull death, dull, absent death and a delicious absence of pain or confusion that for chrissakes you totally miss out on.

The empty page is an aerial or closeup of the human soul, a flag of no country. Everybody gathers in front of it and sings their own made-up anthem (at least in compatible keys, more Boccaccio or Bacchus than Babel), then everybody gets stoned if they smoke or drunk if they drink or drinks seltzer if neither and promises to never watch the news or read the paper again. And they all live happily ever after.

The empty page is silence between the notes of Art Tatum phrasing, or the first tentative declarations of love. Preamble to sweetness, honey, and light. The moment she leaves in the morning and before she returns, and a white down fall comforter.