TLDR
Banished to excess, the checks came regardless, stomped out the flames of common living, poured some dirt and sand on them. I’m a Versailles captive, the head still connected before the ransack, the sweating Antoinette yet fed to Paris, to the basket. Give us bread. I hate my hate, my love, I hate my hate to love, I hate my love to hate. Can feel the obsequious secret, the malignant consistency of the tissue, the fizzling of western suns, the puddles made from hard drinks, hard rain, the same paths through the Byzantine patterns, the storm drains, the gridlines, the bridges, the train stations of Manhattan, all synaptic. There’s a mad thumping, a torn piece of stuffing unearthed from an old worn bear. My childhood surrenders to itself, have run out of good pretend games, have watched the day change from blue to pink to black to blue to pink, each hour, a continental shift occurring, had to go home for the afternoon, had homework and the store was closing. But I am close to opening, close to knowing my own intent but no one will be listening the moment that I hear it. Line to line to line, one thing, unread, unending, only wanting somebody to like it. I have the splash of twelve chapters that will last me longer than the longing lasted me to write. Sit and drink and sit and drink and get up and go close the open door, it’s pouring out. Sit and drink and sit and drink and scrawl. Endlessly flawed brilliance, the shine of the idle, dirty diamond all the brighter for the rough, dulled edge. Like the smart kid that wants to be a teacher, tells people that he wants to be a teacher, gets caught cheating. Playing endlessly a character in the big chorus, coming in at the right times, all lines memorized to cast the spotlight on the few dynamic actors. Here I rest, one credit in the bill, the list read: Boy One, Boy Two, Boy Three, endlessly repeating the names of famous people dripping off the pages. When the time comes, there will be no gruff grunt or muffle, no signal and no signifying thing to say the time should not be coming. But born and burning, stubbornly and slow, the inevitable eruption of the dormant mountain now found out, prevailing winds blow eastward. The people nearest me, the crater dwellers and the small town nestled at my feet will not be saved, but still they wait so patiently. Read backwards, the words will seem wholly inconclusive, elusive, proven right or wrong and left to try again. I cannot hear the song, the ambulance, the siren waking me at night, the cheap tune of the birds in unlit trees, all of these, to me, are nothing. Branches moving as the deer, the fox, the boar, the snake, the bear, the rat try out their shapes and colors. Makes no difference. Here I come for the unknowing ending, the foretold so-so coalescence into nothingness. And yet I clutch the hope that does not hope but only knows. The fruit of my loneliness will drop steadily, will not know which season it belongs to, will falter suddenly and fall, plummeting sadly and unreadily to the great yap of the grave. The tree of my true being will be a tower two hundred feet above this mess, the scrape and scratch and tug of branch and thorn and fern and thistle. I will not poison myself with the intentions of the sun, through the temptation spills through windows in a bright fluid, inviting me to motels with no vacancy, no working faucets. For every god that I could tarnish, for every shoe that I could spitshine clean and study closely, I can only come within an inch. Oh, this crown is heavy and this burden overbearing and this gold and purple cape I wear is very nearly wearing thin. I stitch, I weave each silly symbol weighing more upon my mind than on my tapestry, my coat of arms. I have each city sprawl sprawled out before me, legs open, mouth parted, ravished happily at the frat party, a mix of noisy hands, a new monster, I ask it where I am. Chit-chatter over chewed food amid the clink and din of kitchens. Hear the talk, the awkward gossip dripping sweetly from the woman’s lips. Staring up your naked plains, became apparent, the sweet marriage of the apricot and dirty green. I can see you now becoming as you come to me. We are the cackling static of a few state borders, the mortal errors that we made to make it. You can look down from a spiral tower, the tip of an Egyptian obelisk robbed to give us some perspective, center of the roundabout. You can watch it from the porch steps passing as you rock slowly, wondering in wonderful wonder how you ever got this far. Too much, it means too much to me, it’s just, I mean, I’m really gonna miss it. In the shy day, the shadows battle for the ground and die. This victory, too sickening to watch, is all that matters. Not until the last monument topples down and the last bomb goes off will mankind sift through shards and sand and finally remember. Not until we’re both god and are both god to both will all be perfect. Nothing seems perfect, but behold: the trees reach up with empty hands and are, in time, rewarded. The Chinese lanterns dance in breezes, each a universal stir.
