Forbearance falls from the sky in sleek white flecks, coating our days
with false starts. Judgment Day ends with a Why? It gets exhausting—
the armaments, diffusing of the asocial situation, the differentiating,
categorizing, the corrosive mind sciences that explain away certain
obstacles, breeding others— I marvel at this daily toil, and wonder
who is handling— or slips from the handle. Striving for what I do well,
I toss thoughts like bricks into a dissolving wall, losing ground in pursuit
of some sky-sworn emblem, some promise of past excellence, a ghastly
grip on the mollified system. Our glacial inferiority. Sheet of subterfuge
and checkered history clings to the scarecrow’s shoulders, but it never
wanted to be the hero— it wanted all those winged things to stay away,
far away— watch it now. Arms withdraw from the race. No matter how
near always separate, distinct, like standing outside a building during
a fire alarm, every room buzzing with light. Bright noses leading the pack
through the storm, shedding their thorns, bending their hopes in the shape
of a white— at the entry, you are your own audit— the unsightly blots of
your best attempts percolate to the surface, your brave residue subdued
and scraped. I tell you now, well ahead of time, that nothing I distributed
imparted even a petal of progress onto the scheme. I tell you now that most
days I could not even last to try. Caustic and frantic I, arriving to the point,
fracture my eyes to visualize the pointillist portrait of a public unraveling.
