WORD SHOW
Words walk down a ramp
a mind ramp, of course,
but a sturdy ramp all the same
disoriented models
first furtive, then fantastic
followed by absurd
deranged, halfhearted, wholehearted,
the succession seeming endless
it is a nonsensical progression
or is it
each word with its fancy shoes
a few barefoot
then words about destruction
and endings forgetful of beginnings
one after the other.
I have places to go
things to unearth
but the words on the ramp
keep moving
in tenacious language
in unrelenting wordfulness
and there is no one
to shout STOP
not yet, not now
maybe later
when the darkness becomes something else
and the memory of light returns
like a misspelled word
corrected by a slight breeze.
AN IMPROVISED PHILOSOPHY OF MEANING
Immutable misdeeds and malleable sins
you think in a philosophical haze
drunk on a desire for meaning
more so near approaching endings
before you can even begin
to jot down the words
the most complicated
and the least complicated
of desires return
in the disguises of memories
from nearly every day of waiting
a hoarse voice grumbling
This is the extent of your life
you sensing the smooth distinctions
between hopelessness and madness
then a memory of an early love
like an outtake from what
could have been a memorable film
had the actors been less timid
and the director more mournful
the hoarse voice becomes more so
the listener loses even the simple explanations
the night arrives on time
but the morning is much too distant.
MEETING SISYPHUS
When you find yourself
gone astray, a wrong turn,
a blunder of map-reading
at the periphery of Hell
then tripping forward
an accident of evasion
looking for the way out
touching smells, speaking shapes,
smelling sounds desperately
confusing you more
and more infernally
fearful of whom you’ll meet
needing someone to help
all your words and pictographs
more worthless
than worthlessness
than emptiness
than the void drained
even after emptiness
the personification of
nothingness
you have read and studied
and scribbled blank pages
into word edifices
it is a lost chance, you sense,
perhaps even a last chance,
there is a difference
a difference larger
than between a mountain
and a molehill
or the rock or the stone
of Sisyphus
whom you met last time
you got lost.
NO ONE OF IMPORTANCE ON THIS PUZZLING EARTH
Feeling sorry for your sorrowful self
for the sad fact that you are no one
of importance on this puzzling Earth,
on a rainy morning drenched
with damnation and much worse
you wonder if you were to be executed
never mind if a crime is there
or an evasion from God or self
or if the slightest transgression flickered
life is full of crimes imagined and well-defined
of evasions in abundance and multiplicity
and the proliferating of misdeeds
from the start of the last century
and into the first chunk of this one
which method would you chose:
electrocution or fatal injection
suffocation or hanging
even fancy firing squad
of celebrities or iconic figures,
one with a bulletless gun, of course—
all methods enhanced by world weariness
and the highfalutin delusions of being—
would your execution digitally recorded
whatever the method go viral on the internet
would the bored hurry to the website
and watch enthralled your extinction
like a species unnoticed before?
AT THE VERY LEAST
Even if you really believed
the world was about to end
would you act any differently
caught up as you are
in your routines
rituals and secret little
superstitions of survival.
Maybe, in desperation or the boredom
of a forthcoming ending,
knock on the door of the woman
across the hall from you
the one who rarely smiles
who once told you to go to hell
asked what had you really done
with your miserable excuse of a life.
But for reasons beyond deception
or spiritual certainty
knock you do, knock incessantly
and wait to see if she wants
to have a discussion of the afterlife
perhaps share a bottle of wine
or at the very least
deep kiss each other as if
there were no tomorrow.
