11.5.17

I will not go valiantly. If my dreams
are any indication I will flail out
of this world, a screaming rocket,
a shattered note held long enough
to reassemble glass. Picture this:
an old man whose bones have been
hallowed out
as if with a spoon,
an old man empty of marrow, empty
of color, strands of saliva bridging the
abyss of his open screaming mouth
like strings on a guitar
an old man screaming, STOP IT
STOP KILLING ME AND LET ME DIE
YOU BASTARDS, YOU ASS LICKING TOADS
and in between this nonsense a scattered babble
of insane proportions, harking on love, harking
on the heart and the spirit and the soul, which belong
always to someone else,
saying that a complete life is
finding to whom your heart and spirit and soul
belong. IN THAT SENSE WE ARE ENSLAVED. WE
ARE PUT ON THIS EARTH TO SUFFER MORTAL TOIL,
KNOWLEDGABLE AT ALL TIMES OF OUR DEATH
AND ENSLAVEMENT, STUMBLING IN CHAINS TOWARD
OUR DEMISE, SLAVES, SLAVES, ALL OF US, BOUND TO
THE CEASELESS HUMILIATION OF FINDING WHO
OWNS US, etc., etc., and Picture This:
the nurses and doctors laughing at this old man,
thinking him insane and nothing more. Laughing,
cackling in gaggles, calling their coworkers one by one
to fondle with their eyes the depreciating and insane
old man, who is dying, who is alone, who knows a
truth that has twisted his heart into misery–
that all who share mortality likewise must suffer
the same path he took, because there is no other path,
there is a singular and unavoidable path that all who
live must abide by, and though it looks as if you are alone,
you are not, it was your speed that veiled the others,
but at the end, when it all, slows, down, you will
ponder at the standstill, at all the familiar and miserable
faces, and say, YOU TOO? I DIDN’T KNOW. I WISH I’D KNOWN.
HOW ARE YOU?

Written at 9:52 at night, in my office, in Agoura Hills CA.