Intro
Something about the deeds. Something about the callouses, about the airflow, about the feeds and creeds and breeds. Everything around me have been reduced to an offer. I do not spin. I do not spin. I am Nowhere and everywhere; have everything and nothing.
I. What I Told The Devil
“Do not tell me what you’ve reduced me to. Devil, I am Grand Nobody.”
But I’ve never wanted to travel. But I’ve never wanted to feel
Like I were topping off. My mind had embalmed itself onto
All carnal rotogravures, and all the console of my Luxus
Petrification had been aching to soon mind itself undone.
I calm myself some times. I down the done within myself,
Some times. I had to learn that the Devil had never been
My friend. That I, in the personal, am Calliope and Michaelangelo,
And I, myself, are all of Adam and of Eve, and of Apple and of Snake.
And I, myself, had learned to live, not in decades, but all by the hourly,
And by evolution of rhetoric. (Do judge me by my will for evolution.)
But all my aspirations are for when I’m dead; and what I’ve always
Wanted to be was to become a writer– not a famous one, just one
Who gets by, and jots down how heavy the pellets fall on the roof,
The sound they make, all the slushing and shushing, and shuffling
Of the wild leaves that get to make it, as I, too, hope to make it as
A writer whose no identity is his identity. (Do tell the devil judge
To judge me by the identity of my work.)… I have heard of Adam
And of Eve, but I know the two sorrowmongers only by their infamy.
If I see them both in hell, I would fail to recognize them from faces.
I bet they talk in a certain manner. I bet they walk quite differently.
II. Asphalt Terror
Are you ready to offer again the love that is never enough? Offer again
That certain fervor which is only optional? Are you ready to commune
With all your own evils? Disproportionate afferent captions of the land
Burnt through tomorrows and bickerers of the Lady Luck conservator–
Let me hear about you talking about the stars! (Only stars are truly lucky.)
And so, I have heard they were considering to take the land where you grew;
The land where your left foot learned to never yearn the blues of grooming.
(Have you ever considered my love that never knew of skies? No luck to try!)
Woe, O’ Truman, the young!
Woe to the people who do not reinvent themselves!
Woe to the sinners who did not become saints, and
The saints who never wavered, enlightened by everything
But not all the forms of sinning! O’, but what fun it is to see
Raised cadets from caskets interfere! It must be their hour.
The red hangar bangs, deplatformed by the protrusion,
Through spurs and spouts, scats, scoffs, through
Momentary monetary, the mystery and mockery!
I have not heard much or learn’d much. This is true.
I have not heard of or learn’d of much except envy.
Again, envy! (Envy is just another form of my woe.)
Envy to those who rose and never became mocked.
They know of life’s secret. Envy to those the boat
Unloads for but never rocks. They have the soul
Of teenage Truman…
O’, but how lucky and how lonely! You all must be
Paintful varietals, precincts of cutbacks, of fortunes,
Of splintery! The prestige camp rises and devours!
You get the love that is equal to the love you give!
(I had to ask: do you know that’s no proper way to live?)
III. Accelerants
For again we let
The sighs of time dispel the pride of the lovelorn child.
Love witnessed through the camera roll, and the tumbles of the money, the little thwarts and tuts…
If I am to be miraculously arraigned by my little flatlings with the flat wings, I am to be considered lucky.
I have not known luck since I rose a simple man. The simple kid in me still begs to be outed. I still feel
Like I should have to be feeding my emptiness the Veblen good. When I see myself dispelled, I sense
Myself compelled… There is meaning through life. There is gladness for the afternoon.
“I would rather have a sad story than no story at all,” I sang.
Where is the gladness in this mediocre afternoon, then?
(Extravagance creeps in the corner of your hyperarousal.) You! You!
You’ve told me– through letters– how:
“Every person is born equal but do not grow up equal. This is the harsh truth of society. So why, do I beg you tell, should I care deeply ’bout the thoughts and whispers of those whose time and skill and thought are below me? When mine already isn’t much, then theirs must be already aren’t much.” …This is the inverse of you. I do not believe the inverse of you.
(Extravagance hides in the shoot of the bamboo.)
And then you sent me the post-card that you had taken
From the top of the brightest monument of your sad city;
And in the back, you wrote, through the purest moments
Of teenage agony:
“WHAT ABSOLUTE CRUELTY! LOOK AT THEM! THE PEOPLE
WORKING OVERTIME TO OVERSIMPLIFY OUR COLLECTIVE SADNESS!
WHAT PITY! WHAT PITY!”
WORKING OVERTIME TO OVERSIMPLIFY OUR COLLECTIVE SADNESS!
WHAT PITY! WHAT PITY!”