290315A
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Rendered powerless
in the dead zones
of our separate dreams.
Worn away and out
chasing the unattainable
sides of each other,
trying to find clues
between the lines
of paper thin lives.
We tear each other up,
into paper excelsior
in time for Easter,
when rending and tearing
are made permissible,
in accordance with history.
The shredded scraps
collected in large bags
of transparency
outside bank buildings.
Long lines
of single digits,
all tangled up
with one another
in their various extremes
of linear separation,
remaining socially appropriate,
among all the thin lines,
serving to keep apart,
while making absolutely certain
we can never meet
anywhere in between
all the lines that are drawn
on all the balance sheets
that decide everything.
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100415A
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It is always our insufficiency
that staves us away,
in various degrees of paralysis
up to the extremes of a paralytic
and the flesh inserts
placed into metal legs,
seeking freedom that only comes
from being constrained.
We all crave enough freedom
to carry the burden,
not certain which load,
that is being placed upon us,
will finally break us down
to our own limitations,
being another source of shame.
We reach for our own crutches,
having been weakened
by the persistence of struggle.
The terrible dread
of never really being able,
to stand up for it,
or to live it all down,
being all that grows stronger,
as to the perpetual fear of falling
that comes from being pushed,
so incessantly, so many times.
It comes in each response
to being shoved around so much,
while on the edge
of every sort of disaster,
and always trying to get up
against all the pressures
that try so hard to stop us
from getting anywhere,
to anything at all,
that we ever planned to go to.
The growing fear
as to crossing any of the divides
that more clearly separate,
held in fear of losing something
of our own vital signs
in the dangerous process
of daring to make the connection.
The conditioning kicking in,
the way a circuit breaker
shuts down a portion
of the nervous system,
paralyzing the limbs and voice,
with endless considerations
as to true or false,
right or wrong,
permissible or forbidden,
until everything is shot down
into uncomfortably numb.
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100415B
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The persistent executions,
emphasizing the possibility
of the impossibility,
as the only real issue raised
into any clear view,
beyond the fog of intellect
and the pounding of fists
against any semblance of reality.
The chatter that comes
from a million threads,
teased from the endless network,
all pulled loose and examined,
but offering no real answers
to finding any realizable way
through the corridors of the maze
to somewhere really worth going.
The gradual consideration
as to what rises up
as to that myth of freedom,
as to what comes from the persistence
of annihilations,
obliterating potential outcomes,
the way a screen goes blank
when it is turned off,
at the flick of a switch,
the way one careless word,
turns off, and brings to an end,
and the way alien spaceships
are obliterated,
by the joystick controllers
of a child's video game.
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100415C
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It is never the one you find that you want,
that ever really chances to want you,
but it teaches you to always shake loose,
and never really risk any simple minded hope
as to what romance stories try to teach you.
I was dreaming of a different life,
than anything that I ever chanced to get,
beyond those little teasing tastes of make believe,
and you know that dreams like that die hard,
so then you have to dig deep to bury them.
The list of what I hoped to do is steadily shrinking,
another item stricken off with each passing day,
because something always slips out of reach
the longer and harder you try to reach to it,
as you sift through an endless number of revisions.
The next chapter that gets written
never follows from the one you wrote before,
and you know that you got edited out,
before you came to any better conclusions
about all the where and what and who and how.
They might call you, or they might never call you,
and that left you merely hanging around,
routinely tossing about a few stale mysteries
as if you might find at least one new clue,
as to a more agreeable solution as to what comes true.
It is how it all gets washed away,
dissolved and washed down, as another mouthful,
with nothing of that sweetness that was sought for,
and nothing in it that you really hoped for,
but it becomes the only story you get to remember.
It is something much the same as being shot down,
somewhere over enemy territory,
where your chute fails to open, but you dangle there,
conscious of your own remains, suspended,
but no longer able to save yourself from anything cruel.
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100415D
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They almost always tell you
that it is about suffering
for the All Mighty dollar,
even if you escape being Judas,
which is seldom possible
the way the world turns.
Everyone having to betray someone,
to make a buck,
even if that someone is themselves.
It would be different
if not for a despised forbidden fruit,
and getting tossed out of Eden
in some paradigmatic instance of evil
and its always carefully made plans.
It would invariably have been different
if it had not been for that woman,
regardless of how vile she really was,
and there is always another snake
hiding in the shadows with her
ready to fill you with some more venom
if she did not do enough herself.
A reminder that it is one moment
that ruined it for everyone.
Never forget Cain and Abel,
because if some Eve did not do it for you,
doing it to you, whatever it is about,
then there is always something else
that can kill you dead,
and you can trust a brother for that
even if you can trust nothing else.
If you do not have one of your own
one can be provided,
but you will not be left without
in any convincing scheme of things.
A pattern of history that is subject
to various definitions and shifting details,
depending on whom it is
who is trying to persuade you
of something that you know
could never be true,
but you know for sure
that you have to suffer
one or another path of thorns,
that is not of your own choosing,
and that you have to learn
to submit to enjoying all the wounds.
Each cut is another deeper wound,
and you never really learn
how not to flinch when it happens.
Now each of us is identified
with a number of the beast,
as to our own sordid revelations,
each having their own cross to bear
and really knowing only the dead
who are resurrected on weekdays
when they rise up at twilight
to go back home again
to thankfully pay the rising price
that keeps rising like a toll
that never gets you through the gate.
At least not in this life
and better luck next time.
Something about being destined
to whatever you did not choose,
because it is always in God we trust
and the perpetual poverty
that finally confined you
to seeking 50 years of boredom,
with no chance of parole,
from all those grey on grey shades,
held in the valley of the shadow
of unemployment,
where you fear every evil
that might throw you to the fire.
The perpetual terror of the sack,
and of being drowned,
pulled down to the bottom,
tied to one or another type of stone,
for trying to rise up against pressure.
It used to be that you could get out
after putting in for twenty,
but that was a kind of dream world
that meant you could start living
when they set you free,
having finally made bail money,
to do whatever you always wanted to do
before the grim reaper took you,
but it is never that way anymore
and no one can afford to be free,
from the steadily rising costs
of whatever passes as living,
on the increasingly slippery slopes,
of that multiplicity of endless reasons,
along with tedious entertainments,
that pass as novel stations of the cross,
in a kind of post modern novena.
So it is best not to dream,
of any sort of paradise,
knowing there is no difference
between the free and the dead,
in the valley of the shadow
where it is made easier and easier
to drift into desolation,
and to fall into that debtors' abyss
of perpetual torments,
that no one ever climbs out of.
Knowing they have always got you
held over a barrel,
and feeling lucky
that you are not down inside
with the lid nailed on.
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