Daily Archives: June 23, 2010

Recycling

A Bible and a wallet together on the nightstand.
Glasses (repaired many times) as well.
A body unmoving on the bed beside them.

Stop thinking of this as a tragedy.

That the Book is currently not being read is a case of inconvenient timing.
That the wallet contains only three dollars is a case of simple timing.
That the glasses may still be used in their condition is good timing.

Consider the body on the bed beside them as token spent upon a future.
It originally passed into sleep with the expectation of waking.

Inside the body, spilled oil and unending war combined into a greasy swirl.
Inside the body, scent and noise and smoke will be alive and thus contradictory.
There is meaning to be drawn from them in the unstirring body.
It sleeps because it cannot be awake for that to happen.
It remains asleep because it has not found what it sought.

The body was a piece on a board to be moved.
Movement was the domain of the money, the book, and the lenses in their glued frames.
When all were combined a man existed.

Do not imagine that because the man ceased the remainder is of no value.
Each is a section of a puzzle.
Each is one clue.

Bury the body where it can sustain something as it grows.
Give away the Scripture and the glasses.
Pay the Ferryman with the money.
All will be of use in the effort to solve the world.
That this man has stopped solving means nothing to the solution.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

When We Were In The Cult

When we were in the cult
we didn’t get a lot of sleep.
But they said we didn’t need it,
so we didn’t need it.

When we were in the cult
we talked funny; words had meanings there
that seemed a little off,
but we understood each other well enough.

When we were in the cult
we slept with others in the cult
and made a lot of noise about how
everyone ought to be with us.

When we were in the cult
everything that went wrong
was caused by something we’d done.
There were no accidents or errors.

When we were in the cult
we didn’t call it cult.  We just called it
“being there.”  We slept when we could,
fucked each other now and then,

tried not to mess it up
by thinking or saying or doing
things we shouldn’t.  When we were
in the cult, it wasn’t hard

to be in the cult
as long as we didn’t think
we were in one at all.
As long as we told each other that,

it wasn’t bad at all.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Fear Of A Stupid Death

The fear I have the most trouble shaking
is not the fear of death itself —
I have no fear of inevitable things
like rain or sun or sagging in my chair
with a clogged heart.

It’s the fear of a public and stupid death:

choking on a paintbrush
in a bizarre art accident.
My stomach lining slit
by an errant bay leaf.  Stabbed
with a compass flung
by a petulant eight year old.

I know I’ll laugh about it in the afterlife
but if it happens, if one of those incredible
but embarrassing things takes me out,
in the seconds before I succumb
I know I’ll be thinking,

Christ,
all those years of smoking
and drinking and eating
fried bologna after midnight
were a total waste.

Blogged with the Flock Browser