8.03.06, Zeno's Paradox In Progress

So if someone were to ask me today, "How's the Franky Scale?" I might reply, "Is 'suck' a number?" Too many symptoms today, too poor of management. Too much suck.

Spent some time today trying to make heads or tails out of some material in a draft poem, very recent, somewhat raw, not metaphorically very sophistacated, oh dear. Anyway, it might be worth a look and to assure my reputation, or protect it rather, I simply say something like it's called "In Progress." And leave it at that. It is only in progress still; this is only the first part, and I still haven't figured out how to indent, so you get dots, imagine they're not there. The drop lines might be screwy in your browser. Here, be generous:


“In Progress”

Part 1. The Daily Psychology

2:33 in the morning and I’m alone again. Desk, lamp, pen,
cityview window, scattered papers, a modicum of memory.
After all it’s good days leavened with requisite discussions
-- not conclusions. But then too also or despite perhaps, who
should change a life, and why, too, is the question,
changing your life right now, making change to spend it
while I cash out. A cold truth. Find me some other kind.
I feel lonely, my pockets empty already and for real.

Halfway across the land, you are, all the corn and hills and continental spine,
deserts high and low, endless miles of
........................................................... . . . I want to say “possibility.” It is,
for some. Who am I to complain? I’ve had all mine.
........When Daniel died he was too young and had no warning,
no possibility left. Not a fucking red rat’s ass worth. To die
before you’re 24, to kick for a dumb fucking misstep,
of 23-years’ circumstance unleavened by little self-knowledge,
then fitted into a dirty pan of shit for genes. One of the things
that empty out the land in a wayless meaning. Full of nothing
that means. I take more pills every day than what killed him.
You can go halfway but it’s halfway in no measure,
halfway through nothing but Zeno’s paradox, all the way
into the contradiction — then, full stop. I felt my slap full
in the face, he felt everything and nothing in the same god
damned moment. The moment it all stopped
..................................................................... . . . the calls began.

You will survive any option, any choice. You will be brilliant,
turned diamond and breathless by it all. Any suffering will be
but a moment, no? Because for you there will be a tomorrow
on the other side of that suffering — so suffer, rest if you can,
then step on into the waiting, baby. And if that is the case
why not now for us? Why not more of what is possible
before it’s stripped away and turned to a desert without
the single soul needed to live it, needed to make its sunset real,
needed to count miles both in and out? The desert is real
the desert is now, so how will I stand there, in midst of it,
surrounded by it? Knowing that there is always a “road out”
for me, just a little more time, just a little more time away.
Just a little more of time before it is time. Out.

I see what’s coming. The bus with my ticket. Bus that only goes
halfway. Seats too small, too many passengers but no one to talk to.
No desire even if there were. If there were desire, then no body
on the bus. It comes, it stops where it’s supposed to and then some
of us, are we lucky, do we say “lucky enough,” to know the schedule?
To know when it’s going to stop. Lucky enough to have time
to write those few letters and pack a bag. You don’t need more than one.
You don’t need a watch. You don’t need to check your mail, anymore.
I want to know if this is luck. I want to know how to let others in,
for me, for them, is that what it is I learn, what I need to learn still?
That all can give and some pain to do so? What I’ve got, whether luck
or none, is a swirl of questions like this, a storm of rain words but not
quite the right bivouac, not quite the right fly, no tent. Not wholly
exposed to the elements which would be too dramatic, too contrived,
just not quite enough to know which question in the night’s swirl,
which to grab, which to wrestle, which to risk a hip just to answer.
Part of me feels like I’ll need both hips good for the walk