Failed Visionary
Out of perversity, idleness, cowardice, fatalism and integrity,
I have chosen to shun my true path.
Despite it all, I have developed, in my time,
a certain unavoidable attachment to my life
and my ways: the chronic circlings between frustration
and inertia somehow comfort me – and, in the end,
I would rather be myself than anybody else.
Still, I suppose most people feel that way.
Daunted by the energy that might be unleashed
were I to concentrate on the supposed task –
of what it might subtract, exact and adulterate; and of
the gagging staleness that could issue forth, if finally
penetrated, from something so long suppressed.
Succumbing instead to these afternoons of claustrophobic
wandering and restless prostration. Committed, only
to non-commitment. Driven, only to distraction.
For years on end I have been sitting here,
impatiently awaiting potency: some explosive revelatory surge
that will carry me away and permit no looking back.
But this moment of deliverance has not arrived,
and I have done nothing to hasten it.
Perhaps it doesn’t matter.
Perhaps I wasn’t meant to do anything.
In which case, I have succeeded admirably.
Is there any point in sitting here at all:
courting luck without design; stretching out
a dry spell; groggily awaiting the occasional spark;
comforting myself in the knowledge
of what I might be capable of,
while watching my capabilities slipping by;
satisfying myself that I can’t sink any lower.
Then, sinking lower.
Contact with anybody
who has produced work of quality
fills me with a thwarted yearning empathy,
an implausible sense of fraternity,
a melancholy sting. Regret and resentment
gnawing at me, eating me alive.
This is what you reap
when you haven’t sown anything.
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 don’t care about anybody else’s problems:
They are not as serious as mine.
My sadness is not only deeper than yours:
It is wider and in every respect richer.
Appearing with Stewart Home and Jarett Kobek:
Odd Fellows Hall, 26 Seventh street, San Francisco, CA 94103. Thurs Feb 28th. 7pm
Human Resources Gallery, 410 Cottage Home street, LA CA 90012. Sun March 3rd. 7.30pm
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 sudden deadness
accompanies satisfaction,
and nothing else
satisfies.
