Failed Visionary
I have spent my entire life
preparing to do something
that I am never going to do.
I thought that accumulating
all this learning and experience
might result in something: a body of work…
or a body. While neglecting to take into account
that I might have to do something to achieve that end.
I tried, to no avail, to rot.
I really gave it my best shot.
But vitality kept getting in the way, appearing
unexpectedly, when I was most hopeful
of abandoning hope.
But still I refuse to give up
on giving up. I remain optimistic
that I still have it in me.
A long time ago I made a decision
to become a failure. It wasn’t
as easy as I thought: browsing through life
from one distraction to the next, while waiting
for the last lost moment to become unseizable.
As if there were some fundamental honesty
to not striving: There wasn’t.
I suspected it all along.
There are no levees capable
of withstanding the torrents of distraction
that surge through my mind. Tender
resentments, useless trivia and tired lusts
are carried along like debris on a swollen river,
from which, very occasionally, a lucid thought
emerges – only to be sucked back down
into the sewage of pettiness and vanity.
John Tottenham 