Failed Visionary
Between these three points of love
and sloth (mostly the latter),
I flounder. Resting, without laurels,
restlessly. Pausing between pauses,
to inventory this harvest of regret;
to consider from every angle of unease,
this permanent rut… to forever name remainless,
staring at a curtain.
This death, as opposed to my other deaths,
feels dangerously like spring.
A catastrophic waste of time,
but I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
At this point it would be impossible
to make up for all the lost time.
I might as well try to settle
for a serviceable desperation,
and strive, at least, for resignation:
the long hard process of resigning myself
to the choices I made
by not making a choice.
In a constant state of choking down bitterness.
Getting it all down in the hope of exhausting it.
Only to find there’s more, it multiplies.
How empty my life would be without it.
What a gaping hole it would leave.
And what could possibly take its place?
That’s a good question…
I’m drawing a blank.
To ‘let go’ of bitterness and resentment:
It’s an interesting concept.
I must try it sometime.
No hurry.
I will be ‘appearing’ as part of this bill in aid of a most worthy cause: ‘An Exquisite Salon for the Benefit of Making HM157 Legal’ at the fabled historic monument/ performance space. 3110 N.Broadway in Lincoln Heights. Saturday night, Jan 18th.
Has it really come to this?
http://artillerymag.com/tottenham-corner-4/
There no longer seems to be any point
in pointing out the pointlessness.
It hardly seems worth lamenting anymore.
After all this talk of giving up, just do it.
Don’t worry. Nobody will even notice.
Putting in the time:
Watching: the trembling curtains.
Listening: to the constant hum of indecision.
Waiting: to languish without remorse or hope
of false dawn; to be able to do nothing
and call it nothing. To sink:
where I have never sunk before.
To fade, only to be found again.
The other lives I might have led
all now might as well be
dead. Survived by no one.
Barren, without issue of any sort:
this withered bud, failed
in art and love. With no time left
to change my course. But time enough
for infinite remorse.
I am no stranger to waste, to bouts of tranquilizing
Self-abuse: drifting off with wilting rod in flowering fist.
Thoughts sliding like water across a pane of glass
And over the edge
Of the sofa and elsewhere. And tension detours
To parts unknown, on days that pass unknown;
Held together by dust,
By boredom and all its blossom.
John Tottenham 