Worth & Longing

Considering the nature of Eternity, indifferent to the term's folk conceptions--
purpose and meaning become impossible without devastation.

There is a middle that stands relaxed unawares of the edges,
who never know the enlightened fear of those who teeter.

I don't talk to them. I try to pay them as little mind as I can.
Yet, the middle is vast--too vast . . .
It necessarily drowns out anything from as far as where I'm shouting.

I die literally if I successfully escape,
I die figuratively if I successfully assimilate--
and my in-between is a chance of life inherently fascinated with death--
and in the end, I die with Socratic wisdom
(so long as I avoid suicide).

As my philosophy expands, there is one blinding constant:
nothing is so simple as it appears,
and especially not that which everyone wants to say is so simple as it appears.

I continue looking for the corner on the face to pull,
to rip off this mask of appearances, to finally embrace noumenal reality,
in all its skeleton horror,

in all its gleeful daemon appendage.

Clay figures as language acts

there is exploding and this sense of fading misery . . .
or mystery--it's distant, like running away but keeping its eyes always focused forward as it is pulled gently into space.

Intransigence.

I have been dreaming much, and the images are consistently pleasing . . .
the plots are more incomprehensible than before,
more nameless girls and faces I don't recognize.

I seem to be having trouble trusting myself.

Part of me has been waiting forever to be surrounded by true anarchy,
to finally witness whether I thrive wildly or am among the first casualties,
and so the fear slowly squishing everything in America almost makes me happy.

The other part, though, the other pat wants to become a professional,
not with a conventional career, but able to offer my greatest talents in tangible forms,
with a precarious stability of standing angled, falling forward to propel myself just almost hitting the ground.

"Breaking Out"

I become lucid, remembering the heat of blood and heartbeats. The coming months are brimming, lulled like spring even as the leaves will fall. I am invested in finding my path, back on the road after a blind detour through thick woods.

I feel alive and scared. The pieces I juggle, should they crash, can no longer be replaced--the moment is about to pass, and to fail is to let down everyone who has ever given me a second thought.

The end of August so often percolates, offering hints most of which turn to dust . . . I remember news of Jane, and meeting Jennifer, and Professor Lackey, and my first serious writing class: four, three, two, and one year ago. How much burns away, and the clock-hands move round without pause.

The rope I walk has been narrowing, and the depths below look always darker. There is a sunrise-gradient ahead that opens slowly, and my footsteps confirm the scarcity of balance. I attempt to move ahead of the twentieth century. The air thins, yet grows heavy . . . my face is red, my gaze wavers only from sweat dripping thickly as evidence of the distance I have covered.

I don't know what is to come. I know of a hundred possible endings, and a million paths to any of them, and I focus on the ten that retain fragments of uncorrupted dream. What I have to do:
I have to live,
I have to prepare for my future,
I have to believe in myself,
I have to sway with necessity,
I have to put one foot in front of the other,
and if I am to fall, I have to grab the rope, holding on beyond my hands become crimson, summoning frenzy to pull myself back up--

for the depths would turn me into just another casualty,
but I must be more than human.