This is a poem about nothing
Nothing at all
Nothing et al
Nothing to go on the page, minute after minute
Hour after hour, nothing
That flatlined, catatonic, burnt-out kind of nothing
Where your nerves have been scoured and your emotions
Have been bled out of your arms
But this isn’t the 18th century
So there’s no surgeon with scalpel and pan
There’s nothing
Nothing at all
Nothing
Is the most common response by teenagers when asked what happened
Nothing
Nothing
Nothing
Sullen nothings, ironic nothings, repressed and resentful nothings
Angry nothings
Nothings that hold a war inside that armored word
And that word is anything but empty
Because if nothing is supposed to be a big vacuum
I think it’s time to change the bag
Because nothing can be pretty full
Like all those nights of forgotten promise
When nothing is the laconic response to what is there to do
Nothing
Nothing at all
So many unrealized possibilities in so many lives
Filling all those nothings
With something
Sometimes something can be a sweet nothing
Think about that
Empty calories is kind of the same thing, usually
But some sweet nothings use charm and wit
To create a thing that certainly isn’t
Nothing
Because sweet nothings lead to something else
Nothing doing
You can’t really do nothing
Because you still at least have to be
If you are you
You’re you, which is something not nothing
Not nothing at all
Nothing could be further from the truth
Since the truth is that nothing is ever nothing
Nothing is all
Nothing is all
Nothing is all
Not nothing at all
Not nothing
David Trudel © 2013
