Personal Hell
The road to hell is paved with works-in-progress [Philip Roth]
As a child Sisyphus
once pushed pebbles up an
ant hill and watched them roll down again.
Where do you think
Hades came up with the idea?
Punishment should fit the person not only the crime.
I’ve often been
described as a pen-pusher, so,
Christ knows what kind of hell Hell has in store for me.
My guess is it’ll involve blocks, dirty great big ones.
Is +/- Not
There’s a fine line between fishing and just standing on the shore like an idiot [Steven Wright]
People are many things
but what they mostly are
are are-nots: are not this,
are not that or the other.
The list drags on and on.
As for the things we are
when did you last reach
full isness? Half-, even
quarter-isness usually
has to suffice nowadays.
So, yes, it is possible to
be both generally happy
and not exactly unhappy
concurrently. Arenesses
are betwixty that way.
Same goes for living and
being alive.
All Light is Old Light
I’m old and the mirrors don’t lie [Leonard Cohen]
Mirrors reflect but they’re not the only things.
Puddles, windows and minds but not so much.
Others too, said Lou,
but, oddly enough, not Leonard
though he gave mirrors as gifts
to Suzanne and also Marianne.
I’m not sure that’s true, what Lou said.
It’s poetic and all but if he’d sung,
“I’ll be your prism (refract what you are),”
I mean, would anyone have got it?
Eyes do not reflect. Eyes consume.
They are lucivorous and voracious.
They are black holes.
They are the neediest thing on the planet.
Something to reflect on. Or off.
After all, light reflects off, not on.
Aspects
Aspect is a grammatical category that expresses how a verbal action, event, or state, extends over time.
I would like to propose
a new part of speech.
A verb, as we well know,
is a doing word.
I think undoing words
should be their own thing.
How, for example, does one
do neglect? You with me?
Being neglected happens
like feeling unloved happens—
so, not a doing word, per se,
but a happening word—
a consequence of active verbs
like disdain or scorn
or simply forgetting to pick up
the goddamn phone.