I may as well face the fact
that I am no longer capable
of doing what I once believed
I was capable of doing.
Not that I had any reason to assume
that I was capable of it.
It was just a feeling that I had.
And now I have a different feeling.
October 7, 2013
FEELINGS
September 28, 2013
That Time of Day
A destructive overawareness of time
knives through the hot empty spaces
of an afternoon. A sense of urgency vaporizing
into torpor. Even the traffic sounds tired.
Do something, I tell myself.
What? The same thing I’ve been doing
every day for years on end
with varying degrees of failure.
September 9, 2013
All Down the Line
Passing the various stations,
the vicarious stations,
watching the other passengers get off,
without baggage, at the earliest stop –
once they feel they’ve done their time,
but wanting credit for riding it to the end of the line.
For at the terminal, what awaits?
Just a faded ticket, out of date.
July 29, 2013
XIX
I do not know the meaning of hard work.
But I know what it means to adhere
to a schedule of diligent work-avoidance
as if it were a regular job: a strict routine
of wandering around and lying down
and brooding over wasted time.
I don’t like to mix business
with anything, least of all pleasure.
June 10, 2013
Woodshedding
Grooming myself for a career in failure,
I studied with masters.
Then I realized: they were successful.
For how would they otherwise be known?
There is a difference between the failures
of the successful and the failure of true failures.
A matter of sliding scale:
The failures of the successful are celebrated,
broadcast far and wide;
while the failures of failures are obscure,
buried with them when they die.
May 13, 2013
A Richer Victory
Broke, bitter and alone.
What more could I ask for?
I have failed, at last,
beyond my wildest expectations.
I don’t understand
why I’m still not satisfied.
April 8, 2013
The Arrival
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.
March 25, 2013
A Lifelong Brush With Obscurity
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.
March 15, 2013
A Pitiful Bid for Validation
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.
John Tottenham 