could it be my fault
I feel like any progress made slowly and painstakingly in the last nine or ten months was just all pissed away in a moment, or …
That the notion of progress itself was, here, and maybe is, anywhere, mostly made from illusions.
Could it be that beginning again by stripping oneself of illusion is the only sensible way to go?
Saint Jackson long ago disagreed, exhorting us to let our illusions last until they Shatter.
I am always telling you
That I am telling you the truth–
Is Skatingaway illusory?
I am nevernot
crafting a narrative, nevernot intoning
to myself a story
sometimes out loud where you can hear.
Sometimes they are more like “Things From The Grocery” or “First Steps In Fixing Up A Truck”
and other times they are more like “The Cat’s Name is Leftpaw Meadows” or Aztec Strategery.
The important parts are whether or not they contain illusions (and if so what kind), and whether they lend themselves to essaying:
essay (n.)
1590s, “trial, attempt, endeavor”
(also “short, discursive literary composition” as in Bacon and Montaigne)
from French essai, from Late Latin exagium “a weighing, a weight,”
from Latin exigere “drive out; require, exact; examine, try, test,”
from PIE root *ag- “to drive, draw out or forth, move”)
Whether they contain weight and whether it’s the measurable kind or some other.
***
They want to have a war
to keep their factories
They want to have a war
to keep us on our knees
They want to have a war
to stop us losing to Chinese
They want to have a war
to stop industrial disease
They’re pointing out their enemy
to keep you deaf and blind
They want to sap your energy
incarcerate
your mind
Yet it’s no use saying that you don’t know nothing
It’s still gonna get you if you don’t do something
Sitting on a fence, well that’s a dangerous course
You could even catch a bullet from the peace-keeping force
Mother Mary your children are slaughtered
Some of you mothers ought to lock up your daughters
Who’s protecting the innocents?
Heap big trouble in the land of plenty
Tell me how we’re gonna do what’s best, you guess
once upon a time in the west
***
The insurgency began
and you missed it
I looked for it
and I found it
So begin again like MartinLuther Zen
The mythology begins the begin
Answer me a question I can’t itemize
I can’t think clear
Look to me for reason, it’s not there
Can’t even rhyme
in the begin
(she don’t know what it means)
(doing it)