So it ends.
The monumental search for meaning
awash in meaninglessness.
A quest for beauty
hope
truth
in the passages of the dead
reduced to a stack of text soft with age
graying with dust.
Lost years in this office.
The desk:
a mess of journals
and abridged breakdowns on works of genius.
The small fridge:
so barren that one would look inside and think
"He had never eaten a single meal."
The notebooks:
with line after line of dribble.
Prose about someone else
always devoted to someone else
a life in the creative service of others.
Is this the first time I've written
of myself?
That a pen slid between my skin
and beckoned to me
to say
my name
through coded words?
Before now
was I nameless?
was I not myself?
Never divulging the personal
accepting only the scholarly.
All the sub-text
puns
themes
word play.
What for?
When I never knew the meaning
of why they were really there.
The photos and statues of ageless figures
throughout the world
filling the deserts of blank pages
with purpose
altering lives with crosses and dots
crushing the weight of this world
knowing now that I've severed the ties with lives.
These coded messages amounted to
social academic mountain climbing.
A sport!
Not of life itself!
but the dragging of clocks
the counting of cash.
What now?
How do I see myself?
An ex-lecturer who can only speak about the
work
of
the
dead.
Whose only moments of enlightened speech come when
he's echoing some corpses' quotations?
So it ends...
Then this is where it begins.
Righting the rights wronged.
Writing my flashes of insight.
Inscribing them in notebooks.
Making my own declarations.
This is where it begins.
My Language.
My art
based on language
but what
if any
end do we use language to achieve something mystical, something extraordinary on a daily basis?
I could use no speech
no words
to express my wants and needs (none that would be sufficient).
No verbal communication to use
day to day
to transcend the commonalities of what we say:
"How are you?"
"I'm sad" or "I'm happy"
"I like this" or "I don't like that."
The out come of daily speech is a series of sentences strung together in sequential order to convey the most ludicrous and insubstantial 'facts' of our lives. Daily, do we ever question our existence (aloud, that is).
Do we often profess deep longing?
Do we say the fragments of direction-less word strings that flood our minds, those open
free
interpretations of subconscious (or unconscious) dream-inspired thoughts that, like apparitions, haunt but are rarely heard from?
*outmatchstickpictureframe
No.
We do not use speech openly
the way it was intended (thinks I):
to express ourselves truly...to convey that which only we can convey...to bare our essences so that we can receive others'.
From tongue to tongue lives should be exchanged
but instead
they're degraded,
shadowed by our lofty shields of established personality and the social graces that hinder individuals from baring all in a display of verbal public nudity.
Think: Even when we profess the spirit, what does it show?
"I love you."
Three words. Usually the end of a statement, the thought before a physical embodiment of that verbalization takes control.
That sentence,
the shaper of holy unions,
the builder of trusts,
the caretaker of comfort and ease,
is a fragmented cliche' stifling purity.
It is a half thought covering up truths.
It is a scapegoat for pure feeling and it is the simplest way to escape confused scenarios.
Why reach inside yourself for the words when you've already got some stock ones that work well (enough).
Not everyone is a wrietr (i know).
Not everyone is a speaker either
but even fewer are honest ones.
Frankly, it seems nearly impossible to be one.
Morning Mouth.
The dry air makes me sound twice my age.
I sound like a relic of some ancient
overgrown jungle-ridden past.
Like Waits without the piano accompaniment
like a dedicated smoker without a Marlboro (only sometimes).
When I drink my coffee
blacker than nighttime by Shakespeare's standards!
I groan to myself:
"MMMMMMMmmmmmmm..."
a lawn mower starting its daily exercises
or a dog becoming more and more agitated with his owner's deceptions.
Sometimes, I'll sing a near-song:
"Tell all of my friends
that I ain't comin'
home.
I'm gone, gone
gone."
Then it's too much whiskey
too much death exposed across foreign fields
too much of my elders' lives.
By Midday, I'm nearing middle-aged.
By 7:00 p.m. I'm twenty-four.
I'm without heroics or bestial instincts and animosity.
I have no engine and I won't chop and eat grass (only sometimes).
I'm not from a forgotten age
some bearded ancestor who knows endless secrets.
Worst of all
I'm not the same wise singer who has seen time
through acts of endless touring
and who knows how it all goes down.
I'll just have to wait
wait until morning.
Re: Teachers Re: Students.
What awesome strength!
What god-like power!
Crying children just from yelling
just from a red mark by an answer.
How did my teachers resist?
Wait,
they didn't.
Their granted advantages are gift-wrapped
shrink-wrapped
and given to me.
Thank you, educational systems around the world.
Thank you, for being generous to your teachers!
Teachers, thank you for trying!
Students:
No thank you!
Stay Awake!
Repeat!
Write!
Correct answers!
I said correct ones!
but, supposedly my influence is large
and i agree
though sometimes, sometimes
it makes no sense to me.
How can a natural smile
a pat on the back
amount to mending some
impossible-to-jump-over
gap?
Students:
Yes, I get it!
forgive me, though i may falter
you're more important than you know.
Your tiny hands.
Your endearing eyes.
Your attempts at trying..
I know, I know...
it's not easy. (i was there)
The lesson to be learned
(it's true, it's true):
Listen to your teachers and they'll want to listen to you.
And Gentlemen.
What deliberate style
intentional tastes
loving everything all the way to grace.
How do you do it (and keep doing it) so well?
Smiles saving us mortals from hell.
Shaking enough invalids
out of comatose states.
On a date:
You pay
they ponder,
contemplating the purity of your soul
though they already know.
And what control!
What dominance held deeply under
the guise of passivity.
You offer up every bit of yourself
to a raging fire.
You cast aside your clothes
and run bare-boned down a city block.
Without embarrassment,
without remorse.
And the smiles, of course!
Of course!
At this they all succeed
even the faces in dire need of recomposition
and redefinition.
What talent!
Let me give a hand for them,
all the women:
- no small demands
- no lie that cannot be extracted
- no sadness that cannot be overacted
- none without the prospect of procreation.
And they do it again and again and again...
Small Lives living up the truth living out lies.
Enact the chase.
It's done.
This uphill race:
never won
by anyone.
As far as I can see
the same as climbing a tree
with acidic sap
bark coated in disease
leaves set ablaze.
At the top:
one stops for breath
more miles
and miles
infinite and ever-stretching sky
ask why...
Processions move ever on and progress is a movement never made.
Sadly sang, yet brave:
a cold birth
to a shallow grave.
Then?
It's all sketches and hopes
flourishing
and flying from a mind
to this pen we're living in.
Hyper visibility.
What's worse than not being seen?
Worse than being engulfed by a cloak of invisibility?
Hyper-visibility: body and face attracting eyes like magnets to metal.
This hyper visibility is more antagonizing than the freedom of invisibility:
every motion movement action under scrutiny being followed by gazes that trample on the flow of your simple direction judgmental stares questioning confused what and why? probing to try to find some sort of answer yet the eyes have no mouths to ask stares everywhere and why not?
The invisible man desires acknowledgment, wishes to be seen though he is not.
The hyper-visible man just wants everyone to avert their fucking eyes.
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