precarious nothings by Vincent Cellucci

I made a pilgrimage

to the fountain of nothing

wanted to find the source

of all pointlessness

unsurprisingly

there was no alter of offerings

nor stone engraving

indicating the spring

silent even hidden in grey

foliage or clouds unclear

to me now even before it still unsure

my response

whether to leap in

splay out my everything

precious crumbled in a paper sack

or possibly to cork it

but my martyr drive

has never been a particularly

strong one always an acorn

on concrete next to the vivid

spectrum of my hedonism

which I admit may be shrinking

whether from a slight change

of perspective connected to perseverance

or just the nature of the pendulum

even at this precipice

of the sublime void even eating a popsicle

favored or flavored by existentialists

there's certainly no spot

for a hammock and my bladder

is full

of sierra nevada

I open a book

ferlinghetti

and I dance swaying like a drunk

on the subway

refusing to touch the handrails

and consume

the pages madly flipping

to the next to the next

vaulting from word to word

an acupuncture

of mind and body

as if the book

unlike this

seemingly innocuous

wellspring will never end

---

Vincent A. Cellucci wrote Absence Like Sun (Lavender Ink, 2019) andAn Easy Place / To Die (CityLit Press, 2011). He edited Fuck Poemsan exceptional anthology (Lavender Ink, 2012). He also has two collaborative titles: come back river (Finishing Line Press, 2014) and _a ship on the line (Unlikely Books, 2014), which was a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Award. Vincent performed Diamonds in Dystopia, an interactive poetry web app at SXSW in 2017, and the poem was anthologized in Best American Experimental Writing 2018. He works at the TU Delft Library. Twitter @theexceptionali