There is never enough.
Work more but fail.
Work more and fall
farther behind. This thing
they call dreaming –
it's not like the movies.
It's not like the bedtime stories
we were told in history class.
It's not a churchman's parable
or some enlightened
moral allegory.
I am tired of being told
life is unfair; I am tired of hearing
this is the first lesson people learn
living on their own. I am tired –
exhausted in my bones of apathy
and being steeped in animated corpses
wandering the streets hoping only
for a good death
and the existence of heaven.
If I were
unreasonable, I would understand. But
do not confuse
a simple life for a sparse one. I know
I am a creature with simple tastes; I ask only
that there be enough: a small semblance
creature comforts to remind me I am still human
in the face of my darkly dimming humanity.
Before it's all over, I expect I will be
one more howling baboon in a man-constructed wilderness--
lonely for memories
fast fading
resonance long lost.
Pulpit jockeys tell me
my purpose is to work until I die,
to deny my nature, and the natures
of others, and hope for heaven. Prophets shimmy
on crumbling street corners, beg for change
and scream about freedom
and sing about the end of time
and paint word pictures
of the rot buried in all our busted guts.
Sometimes,
I close my eyes and find that rare moment
that sensation of the clockwork universe
pulsing behind my eyes and in my fingers and toes.
Bur then it is gone. And I am left
with inadequate language
to illustrate. And the words always
come up lacking.
Not enough words.
Not enough anything. I think of the country
my father lived in and wonder I how I got here.
Surround myself with words. Books are blankets
for an uneasy soul that can never find rest.
A cup of coffee, a desk, a pen, blank paper.
Words waft and fade in cigar smoke.
True illumination comes from an $8 beer can lamp
and the cadence of a wind up clock
that never keeps proper time.