...
In his sway, holding
tight to the point
Which must be made now at any expense, he grits out his
words
And feels them bumping stony down paths of other brains
Landslides, mudslides, pebbles in a field, stationary and
irrelevant.
Absently he wonders how many trees he can blow down with his
hot breath of apathy,
This hot air of pompitude and attitude of mischarity.
He wonders, among the rumblings, where he picked it up, his
habits of
Ignorance and self-loathing. But he knows he’s not stupid, just
hateful and
Ruined; he considers the gun, for whom, he’s uncertain, but
in the silence the thought
Becomes as foolish and humiliating as a remark out of place,
uncalled for, offensive,
And he drops it, hot stones.
Why do these moments always last forever? Don’t they tire of
being, and give up,
And leave people like me to the next moment?
But he doesn't really care – his life is a series of these
embarrassments,
Punctuated by kind faces he frowned at and kind words he
ignored,
This hell is familiar, and in a way he wants it.
Yes, he tells himself with a sigh, it’s all about control,
and the control I can’t have,
And the control I must have; I did not ask for this desire,
but now that it’s swallowed me
It’s for me to live up to. Simple, really. It’s a matter of
things becoming other things,
And People becoming Ideas.
The moment luxuriates, and he considers death, a humorous
and bloated bully
Which he has observed from a distance, laughing at himself
for doing so.
What if, he wonders, these minds should die, and I should be
left here to
Dig out their ideas alone?
And if the bones I find hide no gold?
What if everything I've thought and they've thought has been
thought before
By some sordid poet or philosopher or garbage man,
And everything that I use to impress myself on the world is
an old tool, grossly unoriginal,
And stinking of overuse?
Well? And where would I stand?
Quickly he asks himself to try to be happy; he’s sure other
people manage it, and he’s tired
Of trying so hard. Sois
content, he reminds himself, comforted by the logic of
Other languages, ones that sit like field pebbles on the tongue. The sound of it
Echoes in the hollows left by other minds crashing downward,
Wax-melty, and stunned by ocean. Anyone pressing an ear to
the never-ending moment
Could make out waves, and one man’s raving voice.
