all it takes to be complete is to exist. – Elizabeth Victoria Aldrich

October 2, 2019

the totality of reckoning is instant now,
consummate awake forever.

 

transcendental loneliness startles the cusp
of the moment; brings a weary look
of seeming before acting, knowing
before understanding; and understanding

 

it’s now and it’s alone and it’s always,

 

do you know…
shatters like glass.

 

growing pains and breakthroughs.

 

so let me be my hyster
let me have my time

 

(a kind of necessary
only consequential
madness…)

 

let me go
swallow my hypnotics let me
lie down with my knife; heartbeat transfigure
the patter slow, i drag along

 

a life of wrongness, because life is wrong.
 

 

a wholesome inertia of coldness clear,
and we all have insides, which are our escapes;
we all have minds, which we were made to change
and throw-away.

 

bodies neglect to damage
the life we suppose.

 

but we can’t–knowing less,
i sing the wind; living for free, living for
nothing, in the mystery, i realize

 

(everything is its own explanation only.)

 

unlettered metaphysics in
the dark.

 

with insight like a star
shooting through the shadow; like
a blast of hot water in the face.

 

stricken,
i throw open the window and feel remorse.

 

as if i were god

 

i look at the sky and my body stares back,
but i remain where i am.

 

and all i need is as far away…
together with the salty smell of readiness, and the gavel-beginning
of motion, of turning; dance without a dancer,
design of the universe, or dizzy beginning
of time. endless before
my sentence; tracing the arc
of days, i’ve come

to run where the sun rises, to catch up with it
where it lands. and stay the night; to live the whole
through. chew on faulty regret, fingertips of
Perhaps. and an afterword
slow-walking of thoughts, the feeling-arrest
like afterthoughts; migraines of yesterday
scar today…

it’s important to remember
how to content yourself,
distantly; to be
of no use to anyone.

to appreciate life only
where it accedes to the senses, reason
is light, sound, memory; noise is hurt. intelligence
stings even as touch
is revelation, sharp and hard
and sudden.

and the body itself but a slow-to-last meeting,
the soul an eternal teething, old gnashing
of desire; bloody grind of nothing
against the something that
shouldn’t be.

the only way out is to eroticize everything;
make grief gelastic, the creepy glorious, fear fantastic.

the only way to out-pretend
the pretending that is life
is to outgrow it;
not by accepting, or negating, but
sublimating, transmuting;
maturity is what you call psychotic.

the only way to make sense of life is to elect not to live,
even as you dress for the wrong season,
make funny faces and bang your fists.

 

 

life is an obsessive-compulsive disorder. 

lately i found a new look in my eyes
it’s kind of infectious, kind of dangerous,
kind of frozen, haunted; painted on
i notice it
in reflections
and in the reflected stare
of other people; it’s like sadness,
but without despondency–a kind of incredulity,
complicated of vague dismay

and i push away from life, as from a meal i’ve already enjoyed too much

i still my blood  

followdown thud;  

my heart doesn’t know where its been./