Tell-Tale Opening

Today was meant to be okay, but off he went, abusing language, typing at a screen, tilling his head for words, tilting his fingernails to check if he had hidden any ideas under there. Why is he more a concept, and less a person, why is his time more of a chance, than a measurement of days spent star trails apart. He doesn’t know. Does somebody help him? Let’s see. But no. Nobody can ever help anybody.

A collusion silently slides into his head as he comes unstuck in dreams, and his untied shoelaces entangle within each other, almost in the same manner as the spaghetti and rawboned meat he married his mouth to, arranged for it to travel south for a sojourn in his stomach. Everything is fuel when you can slaughter your responsibility, but what can you do when your responsibilities are all that there is, inescapable, laughable, and ugly? And they don’t catwalk on ramps, and stare Adderall-eyed into blank hums of tabloid cameras, but instead hide behind a bouquet and read notes recorded straight from the diary of a romantic author.

So, he snapped, wrote twigs, rolled grass, and shaded toilet-paper with sheer lipstick, and concealed all of it with words like “bedlam”, and “tender”. Soon, it will be alive in the world, wailing thru people’s judgments and their indifference. He told people, and three out of forty of them listened beyond their capacities, that nothing comes out of searching for uniqueness, and to wither vastly and knot your programs and your steps in life to create dangerously your sense of happiness tingles somewhere, resonates elsewhere, within your being, because there’s not more than that. Everything that you do, is contained within you, contaminated by you, but sometimes it seeps beyond you and affects the streams of other life. Is that okay with you? Are you scared, or sorry, or fucking terrified?

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Watt

It's all a matter of rust and shine, to serve a distinction between to have and to have not.

25 thoughts on “Tell-Tale Opening”

  3. Masterful piece of self-knowing, Poet. Equally masterful evaluation of the worth of any effort in the lives of others.

    It brought to mind the adage that you cannot control the consequences of what you say or do; which does not excuse the injunction that we must lean towards the light in what we say or do.

    It is overwhelming light with you, Poet, despite the word ‘contaminate’ which is an exceptionally harsh word. But that said, I have to say immense talent should be accompanied, as you have done here, with the reminder that most people may well be beyond the help of others. no matter how talented those ‘helpers’ are.

    A moving and skilled review, Poet, of your own backward look at the eight months in which you have been with us.

    If the question in your last sentence is inwardly directed, I’ll be afraid only if you depart from the astonishing literary and moral equilibrium of this piece.

    I realize that it is absurd for me to say this after I have written this……but words begin to fail me when I consider the concise way you summarize the responsibility, loneliness, self-gratification, self-questioning, pleasure and warning to readers of a vocation like yours, Poet. Fail me.

    Sarah

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  4. I think I’m sorry, and terrified, and scared and everything else on the spectrum of negative through to positive. I loved how this ‘he’ could be you, or someone else, the ubiquitous writer, wondering what the hell he’s doing. If that writer is you, you’re doing a dangerously good job. I love your opening lines, which then tilting and lilting continue throughout until the end.

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  6. What should I say Watt? The life that you speak of hear, filled with bridges, turns, turned and swoons and unique images just capture the uncertainty of my own personality with so much truth that I could speak it loud to myself every night before I sleep when I sit for my navel-gazing.

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    1. Thank you profoundly, David.
      Pride we carry, pick apart as the weight of our hearts,
      But most of us have a power over it,
      And others are sinking into the sea.

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  9. Maybe I’m the odd one out, but I’m exhilarated. The ugly mess in the muck that I’ve been, and will be again only makes it all more interesting. The collusion and contamination are balanced out by the countless checks that life puts into place, those intersections that demand a question(s), choice(s) and action(s) – That way? This way? Both ways?… Lion? Tin man? Scarecrow? Who do you want to be? Name your writer, pick your poison/potion. Dorothy, we’re not in Kansas anymore, but it’s about to get interesting, a green horse told me that there’s some sort of wizard at the end of this yellow brick road.
    A gorgeous read. You know, your name fits, because you’re like an electric surge that has amped my mind up today with your profound contemplations wrapped up in layers of fluffy goodness. My oh my, writing like this just makes me hum with inspiration 🙂

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    1. I love this comment. I feel really proud about making you “hum with inspiration”.
      And your exhilaration makes you our leader, in a way or two. Lead us to war with your brilliant direction. 😂

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      1. Haha. You earned it, so, wear your proud loud, my friend. Well, I don’t know if my direction would be brilliant, but I can tell you that it would be unique and fun, and should I be the leader, my little troupe would never forget the adventure! :))

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