Only If You March First

BEFORE ANYTHING, I gotta say that I LOVE COMMENTS; how else would I know that you came here naturally instead of through the ridiculous tags? Thank you.


(Before this post commences, I should tell you about the night's vagaries: just as I was getting ready to publish this, the computer crashed and would not restart. Then I discovered that my bank account had gone into overdraft during the night. I sat here with the computer for an hour, tweezing dust from the fans. There was't much there, but at least the thing starts now. Hello hooray March.)

Hi! This is a Zygarnic poem (the "Zygarnic Effect" is that nagging discomfort that accompanies neglect of one's duties). Motivated by "why complete assignments when the everything is just so much?" 

I had been called for jury duty on the day (in june, 2002) before this poem was written;  appearing punctually at the courthouse and everything, I accepted the $20 that they gave me (for "lost pay") and got drunk with it during lunch. 

I walked around, smelling Gardenias and looking for misspelled traffic signs (the two notable ones read 

DEAF CHILDERN 

and 

NO INTOXIATING BEVERAGES PERMITTED IN PARK.


Yes!).

And I didn't spare a thought for my woefully overdue Master's thesis, which felt as good as it could have felt. If I were a string, I wondered, what tone would I produce when plucked?

deadlines are guidelines

before it writes

it speaks and

before it speaks

it thinks and

before it thinks

it moves and

when it has moved

enough to think then

it stops moving for

long enough to think

the thinking and after it

thinks the thinking then it

does with it what it will or

what is generally expected

so excited to be up on its damn

self that it forgets the motion

and is discovered locking

certain doors without any

palpable effort but what if it just kept

moving and moving and moving and

moving (like an advancing desert) and moving and

moving and moving (like love or somesuch) and moving

and moving (like a collision minus impact) and

moving (sallying forth)

and (don’t hang on)

moving (ha

a-ha-a-hahahahaha) getting

all like there’s no shame ‘cause

there’s not and also something’s there

like a proton you know

everything always

happening for real

at the same time

what kind of crazy

shit is that

New Age against the Machine

1/27/2011, 1:36 PM


I've chosen to stop cusping. It's been ages that something of outrageous substance and/or significance has been "just around the corner," like anybody ever specified which corner, and imminence bothers me, and the things that have done have only been muted by comparison to how they feel in the intractably amorphous alchemy whence they originate. Where have the wires frayed? Is there merely a shyness of signal? I have innumerable carcasses that were never bodies of any kind, and it's a good idea to stop gathering (dust? acorns? senses?).

So, I'm forcing my own hand, and love not knowing what that means or if that means anything. Where do I begin? I was gonna, and have attempted to, write about how dog breeders should be prosecuted (which is true--they're a bunch of profiteering pervs).

Or about how a way to reduce unemployment while solving a myriad of infrastructural crises au courant would be to build an extensive and thorough cross-country network of underground trains, all with subway stops that are each denoted by a Subway™ shop (they already have signage, restrooms, and cash registers). 

Also, I was gonna write about my ages-old wannabe contributions to the Lexicon of Millennial Youth, now that they're older and their innards are rotting just like everybody else's always have (the term chilling like pie filling is the only reasonable antidote to the hopeless moronity of of chillin' like a villain and/or the obscenely insipid chillin' like Bob Dylan). But I won't get into any of that.

Instead, I'm going to celebrate my wife's birthday. She's absolutely marvelous.