the first step is admitting you have a problem...
When I am sitting alone, reading, I am often distracted by the thought of other people
sitting alone, reading. I wonder how much of it is sinking in, like its a race
of osmosis or something. With me it takes a hundred pounds at the door before
I let anything in. Not by choice, mind you. Is as if I have this amorphous state
that hates to be formed this way or that. One second I'm a decent father, but a lump
again soon enough. Yesterday I was an earnest academic again. I reveled in it until
I picked up one of my old texts and tried to get back into the groove.
Things keep moving without you I kept thinking, unable to absorb concepts I
supposedly could once parlez. So I just sat there, the starefaced could-have-been who keeps
trying to believe he's just Zen. What does my soul have against form? Psychic commitment
anxiety? How many confessions is it going to take to breakdown completely what is still
standing so I can start over?
If I could just put to rest this game within me, I might actually get somewhere.
Part of the problem is that you can sometimes see the future. That's a tough one.
So-and-so's poetry is the poetry of loss (Gilbert?), of hope (give me a name), etc.
Sometimes this goes for us. If I continue to compose and catapult my work into the river,
what might someone say of me? "The art of writing without writing" (thanks Bruce),
"the poetry of waffling consciousness", "The poetics of reverse X-ray hearing"?
I see the end too easily and have trouble committing to the act without a grin
slipping through to the cameraman.
I struggle with new knowledge, and I can't stop seeing the future.
There's no hope for me, truly.
Next time I'm at a fountain
I'm wishing for a very special amnesia.
sitting alone, reading. I wonder how much of it is sinking in, like its a race
of osmosis or something. With me it takes a hundred pounds at the door before
I let anything in. Not by choice, mind you. Is as if I have this amorphous state
that hates to be formed this way or that. One second I'm a decent father, but a lump
again soon enough. Yesterday I was an earnest academic again. I reveled in it until
I picked up one of my old texts and tried to get back into the groove.
Things keep moving without you I kept thinking, unable to absorb concepts I
supposedly could once parlez. So I just sat there, the starefaced could-have-been who keeps
trying to believe he's just Zen. What does my soul have against form? Psychic commitment
anxiety? How many confessions is it going to take to breakdown completely what is still
standing so I can start over?
If I could just put to rest this game within me, I might actually get somewhere.
Part of the problem is that you can sometimes see the future. That's a tough one.
So-and-so's poetry is the poetry of loss (Gilbert?), of hope (give me a name), etc.
Sometimes this goes for us. If I continue to compose and catapult my work into the river,
what might someone say of me? "The art of writing without writing" (thanks Bruce),
"the poetry of waffling consciousness", "The poetics of reverse X-ray hearing"?
I see the end too easily and have trouble committing to the act without a grin
slipping through to the cameraman.
I struggle with new knowledge, and I can't stop seeing the future.
There's no hope for me, truly.
Next time I'm at a fountain
I'm wishing for a very special amnesia.