The Wasted Land

*Note- It helps if you've read T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land"


Every Saturday the same people
walk into the same bar.
Same fucking people,
week after week; and I among them.
Wasting time.
Wasting life.
Wasting money.
I swear the same songs are played
week in, week out.
Why do they do this?
Why do I do this?
Wasted opportunity.
I regret every decision that led me to this wasted land.
Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out. Blood is like wine.
Couples.  Count them.
One, two, three.
How long have they been together?
Love. Lust. Whatever. Everyone's favorite damn disease.
Do you know who I am? Sitting across the room.
I'm the girl in the hat and trenchcoat.
So vintage.
Come to me lover, buy me a drink.
Get me wasted. I'm in this wasted land; might as well join in.
I don't have a million dollars to spend.

I see her across the bar.
If she's one of them, she's cute.
Blonde, tattooed. Like you.
My virgin skin, no stories on the surface.
Her stories, skin deep. Like yours.
Competition is a waste.
Of time.
Of money.
Of energy.

The music keeps this place as silent as a concert.
No chatter drifting to the farthest corner where I sit.
Dead place.
Why do I keep coming?
Look the part of the french writer, sitting, making believe she is Eliot.
Eliot wasn't French.

Oh fuck off and play along.

Yeah fat bitch, I'm skinny, young and better looking.
And you have a man.
Ce la vie.
I'll take my independence and run.
Lo que paso, paso entre tu y yo.
She doesn't need to know.
So glad you don't kiss and tell and I don't know her.
Works out nicely.

Sinking deeper in the muck and grime and shit of every day living.
Pour me another, Lover.
Help me get wasted. FTW.

God this music is at least ten years old.
"Off the chain"
There's something you don't hear anymore. Middle school.

What shitty years.
Sitting alone at lunch.....Fuck, don't point out the irony.

And there they all sit
like nighthawks living out their individual little lives.
Lovers will be loved.
Friends will gossip.
The lonely will always try and look preoccupied with a life that occurs
anywhere but here.

A small crowd begins to form around the bar.
Two and a half hours till last call.
How many drown their wasted lives at the bottom of a Bud Light?

Pinky swear? Pinky swear.
She's deep in the wasted land.
I can tell as she twirls herself around in her bar stool.

Slash's guitar solo in "Sweet Child of Mine" sounds like sexual ecstasy.
Those few minutes before orgasm.
Oh Lover. If only I didn't work tomorrow morning.
If only she wasn't here.
I want you in my bed.
I want you inside me.
And  just as suddenly, the moment passes and I'm left in the Wasted Land.

I wanna be your lover.
So appropo.

Close me out.
Get me out of this Wasted Land.
I can't stand this noise much longer.
The looks.
They look at me like I don't belong.
Please don't look at me.
No, look at me. Make me feel like I exist.
Have I wasted away here?

When the lights out, it's less dangerous.
Turn out the lights!
Go to bed!
Leave the Wasted Land.
Until next week.

Isolated in a Crowd

With all the new and improved ways of keeping in touch with people, I find myself isolated in this sea of technology. People come and people go, promising to keep in touch, but never doing so. Oftentimes, there is no explanation, no fight, and no reason whatsoever. Other friends tell you of better ways of keeping in touch with people, but these are merely fads that come and go along with those friends that came with the new ways of communication. I have learned the hard way who my real friends are; look at my call log, I talk to the same 5 people, those are my real friends. Everyone else is merely scenery that comes and goes as I run my course. Try as I might to make that scenery part of my life permanently, I find that many times they slip through.
How is it that the more avenues of communication we have, the less we actually tell people? How many conversations have you had that consisted of "Hey what's up? Not much, just here bored...(insert random stuff here)”. That is hardly a memorable conversation; there is no real exchange of information, no connection. Most conversations lack depth and actual thought process. We don't remember what the person we are talking to has told us because it's all meaningless and we throw it out of our minds. We become more isolated the more we try to connect.
I’m tired of giving people excuses for not really keeping in touch. I’d much rather talk to someone on the phone or face-to-face; it’s easier to pick up meaning with as many context clues as possible. Sarcasm and irony are two of the hardest things to write and pick up in writing. Granted, some people are very good at subtle sarcasm that only other really sarcastic people can pick up on, but for the most part, sarcasm is easier to pick up when there’s a voice involved, not merely the written word.
Are we so afraid that others will not approve of us that we can no longer express exactly what we feel? That we have to hide behind “w/e” or “lol” when we’re not really laughing, just because we don’t have anything else to say? Can we no longer think of intelligent things to say to others that we have to talk about the everyday complaints and grievances? Are we afraid to really talk?
I refuse to give excuses, if you want to talk to me; you know how to get in touch with me, call me, e-mail me or message me on AIM or MSN. I think I have enough online addresses, if they are not good enough for you, fine, then I will know that I’m just another friend on your interminable lists of so-called “friends”; just another face and name but not a real person. I am more than what my online profile says but you would never know because we have lost touch with one another. We have drifted apart in this sea of technology and most of us would never even notice…