Nothing matters
Nothing will come of nothing
Nothing is everything
Nothing lasts

No one cares
No one believes
No one listens

Nowhere beckons
Nowhere comes to claim its heroes
Nowhere holds me in its shadow fingers

Nothing matters
No one cares
Nowhere beckons

One might complain
One might mope
One might quit

I think of that story
Paul’s Story
He steals money from a cash box and takes the train to the city
He does all the wonderful beautiful things he’d always dreamed of doing
Sees the shows, eats fine food in fine restaurants with fine wine, and all this in fine clothes
And then the weekend is over, and he knows he’ll be caught, and this was always the plan,
to jump in front of the train and be done
And in the story, for whatever reason,
the author has Paul think,
as the train’s bearing down,
that this was a mistake

The desire to quit
to flee
to exert freedom
when freedom equals enough money to not work and to yet live well within the rules of the setting that one’s grown up with, that feels like the real one, that feels like home
All over your skin
you’re coated by this panic this desperate longing
to get the fuck of this jam
But there’s nowhere real to go to,
no one real to go to,
nothing real to do
except
go to work
and try
to not make things worse
for yourself
or others likewise trapped
in the gear works