[It Seems Important]

It seems important
to write down
I've nothing to say

it seems important
to say I've something
important to say

it seems important
what I think important
is only important

to me, I always knew
I always knew I could prove it
saying so much so often

The Big Melt: Anything Gone Is Replaced

No, I don't want to explain why Karkowski works on me - to me much less you - since someone asked. Maybe I'll elaborate more someday, if only to me, but I'm happy enough putting on the headphones and being melted by the music and not worrying why it works after I reemerge. Lordy, it works.

• BRT. My next project, should I choose to accept it, is wondering about Veirs Mill Road, sometimes spelled Viers Mill Road, the most underrated most important route in Moco in my Moco mapological universe.
• Necessary.
• GITMO's banned book list.
• Riffing obliquely on how a David Foster Wallace road movie is a terrible idea.
• Frances interviewed.
• Whisht.
• Merrill, for those of you who do. I could be very wrong when I say I don't see nearly the clamor for Merrill's poetry as once - and he was a superstar in that tiny universe once - and it's not because he was gay but because the poetry hasn't aged well.
• In this bullshit but harmless(?) silliness I'm Sylvia Plath, with predictable 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th. But yes, yellow, purple, blue.
• In the House of Wax.
• Obscure Sound's Top 50 albums of 2013, with sound.

ADVANCES

Keith Waldrop

seventy wingbeats

per second
 

vagaries of vegetation, rosy

anticipation I

turn the page without

reading
 

essence of

accident
 

what is the strongest

motive what

drives the solar wind
 

time’s not so

old, dating only

from the creation
 

New England has

cooled significantly, icy

core with a sooty coating
 

this ice

hard to break—the brain

will have to wait
 

catharsis of the

vulture, obligatory

vespers
 

a bat, painted the

color of joy, head

downward because
 

the brain is

heavy I put on

music but don’t always

listen
 

whether magma could

rise to where tones reach

audible frequencies
 

modest success with a late

parasitic moth we will soon
 

find out if all this

is true
 

sudden drain on the

heart, more

doubt, the big
 

melt: anything

gone is

replaced

Zbigniew Karkowski

RIP. Love love love. More pieces tomorrow.

Also We Have Television, or: Sixty-Four Today

Past years I'd post Television mostly, solo stuff today. I saw Television live twice, Verlaine solo many many times, you've heard lots of Television (and Television is great!), you know how to find Television should you want, so solo Verlaine today for his 64th birthday.

Tooth update? Progressing from cold soft food to hot soft food. This has been too easy. Waiting for the trap door to spring.

• Well fuck, just now (8:30 AM EST, 12/13/13) I see news of the death of Zbigniew Karkowski. Pieces tomorrow.
• RIP Mac McGarry, a DC icon. Once I daydreamed of making Gaithersburg High School's It's Academic team, then I discovered girls and became a stoner.
• Georgetown! (the neighborhood). Shooting down an urban myth: Metro did not put a stop in Georgetown because of neighborhood fears of who would take the train to Georgetown to rob them, Metro did not put a stop in Georgetown because of geography.
• It is a sign of how shitty my soccer team is that signing two washed-up defenders no longer wanted by their previous employer legitimately constitutes a major upgrade.
• A Wedding.
• The Negative.
• Above two a result of finishing half of John William's Stoner yesterday. Second half today. Holyfuck, it's brilliantly crafted, brilliantly devastating. I recognize the fact that I've spend more than half my working life on a college campus makes the novel more personal for me, but kapow.
• Serendipitously posted, the second from bottom bullet here is the phenomenon that both stimulates and paralyzes Stoner.
• An academic bleggalgaze.
• Keep babbling.
• Beckett, for those of you who do.
• Mary Szybist poem. 
• Yes, I've posted the James Tate poem below before, more than once probably. (A) I like it, (B) I needed a line from it for this post's title.
• Lyn Hejinian essay.
• The church says the world is flat.
• Piano as drummage, with sound.

THE COWBOY

James Tate

Someone had spread an elaborate rumor about me, that I was

in possession of an extraterrestrial being, and I thought I knew who

it was. It was Roger Lawson. Roger was a practical joker of the

worst sort, and up till now I had not been one of his victims, so

I kind of knew my time had come. People parked in front of my

house for hours and took pictures. I had to draw all my blinds

and only went out when I had to. Then there was a barrage of

questions. “What does he look like?" “What do you feed him?” “How

did you capture him?” And I simply denied the presence of an

extraterrestrial in my house. And, of course, this excited them

all the more. The press showed up and started creeping around

my yard. It got to be very irritating. More and more came and

parked up and down the street. Roger was really working overtime

on this one. I had to do something. Finally, I made an announcement.

I said, “The little fellow died peacefully in his sleep at 11:02

last night.” “Let us see the body,” they clamored. “He went up

in smoke instantly,” I said. “I don’t believe you,” one of them

said. “There is no body in the house or I would have buried it

myself,” I said. About half of them got in their cars and drove

off. The rest of them kept their vigil, but more solemnly now.

I went out and bought some groceries. When I came back about an

hour later another half of them had gone. When I went into the kitchen

I nearly dropped the groceries. There was a nearly transparent

fellow with large pink eyes standing about three feet tall. “Why

did you tell them I was dead? That was a lie,” he said. “You

speak English,” I said. “I listen to the radio. It wasn’t very

hard to learn. Also we have television. We get all your channels.

I like cowboys, especially John Ford movies. They’re the best,”

he said. “What am I going to do with you?” I said. “Take me

to meet a real cowboy. That would make me happy,” he said. “I

don’t know any real cowboys, but maybe we could find one. But

people will go crazy if they see you. We’d have press following

us everywhere. It would be the story of the century,” I said.

“I can be invisible. It’s not hard for me to do,” he said.

“I’ll think about it. Wyoming or Montana would be our best bet, but

they’re a long way from here,” I said. “Please, I won’t cause

you any trouble,” he said. “It would take some planning,” I said.

I put the groceries down and started putting them away. I tried

not to think of the cosmic meaning of all this. Instead, I

treated him like a smart little kid. “Do you have any sarsaparilla?”

he said. “No, but I have some orange juice. It’s good for you,”

I said. He drank it and made a face. “I’m going to get the maps

out,” I said. “We’ll see how we could get there.” When I came

back he was dancing on the kitchen table, a sort of ballet, but

very sad. “I have the maps,” I said. “We won’t need them. I just

received word. I’m going to die tonight. It’s really a joyous

occasion, and I hope you’ll help me celebrate by watching The

Magnificent Seven,” he said. I stood there with the maps in my

hand. I felt an unbearable sadness come over me. “Why must

you die?” I said. “Father decides these things. It is probably

my reward for coming here safely and meeting you,” he said. “But

I was going to take you to meet a real cowboy,” I said. “Let’s

pretend you are my cowboy,” he said.

Note the Terms: Obscurantism, Factorize, Fagaceous, Endocarp

Why didn't you tell me there's a new Kitchens of Distinction album? Thanks to all who sent good wishes. In at nine, three shots of local anesthesia immediately given, given twenty minutes to kick in, then forty-five seconds of yanking and wisdom tooth out. Clamped down on gauze for an hour, that's now out. RX for codeine if I need but gonna try Advil alone first (dentist said ALWAYS use Advil/ibuprofen for dental pain, by the way, it blocks pain in a certain way that makes it best for teeth hurt). So yes, I'm taunting Baal when I say I could not have imagined this not sucking this much. Have songs and a poem. I found my copy of Stoner I bought when everyone was talking about it last year which I promptly and accidentally kicked under my bed when it arrived which I found last night, reading it today is today's plan. Regular programming returns tomorrow, or not. Yes, just below is an old Kitchens of Distinction song, probably one of the ten songs posted most often here.







STATEMENT WITH RHYMES

Weldon Kees

Plurality is all. I walk among the restaurants,   

the theatres, the grocery stores; I ride the cars

and hear of Mrs. Bedford’s teeth and Albuquerque,   

strikes unsettled, someone’s simply marvelous date,   

news of the German Jews, the baseball scores,   

storetalk and whoretalk, talk of wars. I turn   

the pages of a thousand books to read

the names of Buddha, Malthus, Walker Evans, Stendhal, André Gide,

Ouspenski; note the terms: obscurantism,   

factorize, fagaceous, endocarp; descend   

the nervous stairs to hear the broken ends   

of songs that float through city air.

In Osnabrück and Ogden, on the Passamaquoddy Bay,   

in Ahmednagar, Waco (Neb.), in Santa Fé,

propelled by zeros, zinc, and zephyrs, always I’m pursued

by thoughts of what I am, authority, remembrance, food,

the letter on the mezzanine, the unemployed, dogs’ lonely faces, pianos and decay.

Plurality is all. I sympathize, but cannot grieve

too long for those who wear their dialectics on their sleeves.   

The pattern’s one I sometimes rather like; there’s really nothing wrong

with it for some. But I should add: It doesn’t wear for long,   

before I push the elevator bell and quickly leave.

Barbiturate Babykins, Narcotic Slut, Black Oil of Opiate

Woke up with that in my head. Hey! I'm having oral surgery tomorrow! I'm fifty-four years old, I'm getting a wisdom tooth yanked out. For fifty-three years I thought my wisdom teeth painlessly impacted and dormant, then my top-right wisdom tooth headed south suddenly, need to have it - and only it - extracted. I don't know if I'll have the opportunity for a dental selfie like the one that is this blog's header from 8:00 PM EST 12/11/13 until 8:00 AM EST 12/12/13 that I took last root canal earlier this year and if I do if I will.

My oral surgeon, who both looks and talks like Colonel Flagg in MASH (but is highly recommended, Washingtonian Magazine approved), tells me two shots of novacaine, five minutes, two stitches, two days of Aleve, shazam. Uh-huh. My regular dentist, who looks and talks and scrapes his face with his hands like Brian Keith in Family Affair (but is highly recommended, Washingtonian Magazine approved), tells me get the tooth out now or die a long and sinus-infection afflicted death. So.

Doctors and dentists tell me I have a remarkably high pain threshold, which is no comfort when things hurt, so I'm hoping to avoid opiates (decades ago I enjoyed my recreational experiments with opiates so much I was quickly scared into quitting) because as pain-killers the RX opiates make me throw-up.  As I said, I'm assured the surgery will be quick, relatively painless, with extremely low risk of complications, I can even eat and drink after midnight tonight as only a local will be used, but still, should something go horribly wrong, I will be wearing my emergency medical bracelet.

• Which is to say, I may not feel like link-farming tonight, writing tomorrow morning, and link-farming tomorrow night. Maybe I will, maybe I won't, maybe I'll post, maybe I won't. Regarding link-farming, it's fucking December, people aren't posting more than they never post anyway. Blegsylvania: Deader Today than Yesterday, Not as Dead Yet as Tomorrow. 
• As I've already written, call me when Pope Francis grants equal status to women and sells the Vatican's riches and donates all proceeds to the most impoverished before I think him anything but a Corporate barker, but it does make me smile that he makes right-wing assholes' heads explode.
• Buy me dinner here + train to NYC & hotel room for Giftmas.
• John Waters on Giftmas.
• My soccer team sucks and is run by morons. If the over/under on games played by Arnaud next season is ten, I take the under.
• Johnny Cash and Neko Case, with songs.
• Peter Broderick.
• Serendipitously, this amazing song's title (I heard the song first time yesterday while listening to Berger's show from last weekend) sounds like a pain-killer.
• My apologies, editing this post reminds me to not assume my reflexive shortcuts are not necessarily your reflexive shortcuts.
• And yes, when I hear the beginning of this next Fuck Buttons song the Kate Bush song below the poem starts playing in my head.

MEDS

Cynthia Huntington

1.

Living from pill to pill, from bed to couch,

what doesn’t kill me only makes me dizzy.

Pain dissolves like chalk in water,

grit on the bottom of the glass.

Waiting takes forever,

throbs to the soles of my feet, Bella noche . . .

Hives as large as mice hump up under my skin

(“no more barbiturates for you, Cynthia!”)

—itch, stretch, I don’t fit my flesh—

sting, tingle, prick, the sorcerer’s threat.

There’s a knife stabbed through my left eye.

My right foot is made of elephant hide

and weighs in at roughly one cartload of potatoes.

Oxygen twenty-four hours; I’m swelled with steroids,

prednisone buzz in the brain; a motel room

with sixteen foreign workers sleeping in shifts,

playing reggae at three a.m.

  

2.

Oh I love my white pill

that makes the black fist of pain unclench,

unspasming the nerves. I float,

released to darkness visible,

worlds dissolving.

And the yellow pill, bitter on my tongue,

that wakes me at 2 a.m.

writing out plans in Arabic

to organize an expedition to the Pole.

Drug of hubris searing my eyes,

my scrawl unreadable in daylight: foil my enemies.

Bitter taste of fugue,

my hand shakes: some foreign being in my brain giving orders.

You must You must You will.

Later, the pungent brown liquor

shoots the dark with threads of gold behind my eyes.

One flash as the mind goes out.

  

3.

I must elude pain

                                                            float past clarity

pain in the brain

                                                            slammed down like a housefly.

It’s a big dodge.

Fly on a stovetop

                                                            sizzle and ash pop.

This is illusion,

                                                                        mental confusion

                                                            born in the synapse.

What can be undone

                                                            down to the last gasp.

It’s a hodgepodge.

If you kill pain

                                                you will become pain;

pain does not feel pain,

                                                            no nerves in the brain.

It’s a mind-fuck.

It’s just your bad luck.

                                                            A torpor sealed my brain

                                                            I felt no humans near

                                                            it seemed to me I could not feel

                                                            or touch or see or hear.

I don’t know who I am

                                                            without my medicine.

My skin will crawl with bugs

                                                            if I don’t get my drugs.

My brain’s a maelstrom,

                                                            singing a sad song.

Reality is so cruel.

Prednisone oh prednisone

so fast my mind racing, never tasting

rest.

Razzle-dazzle razz

Fist bitch piss stitch witch . . .

                                                            (only wait, the fit will pass.)

fast, gash, lash, splash—QUIT!

(I saw a werewolf in a white suit, walking

past the tables at the Full Moon Café.

Floppy bow tie, big furry hands.)

Percodan, Percocet, let you go, let you rest.

When the grip lets you go and you float like a note

on the flow, there’s your life, there’s no worry—

(yeah, it’s funky how the night moves.)

Barbiturate babykins, narcotic slut,

black oil of opiate. Chatty Cathy, dirty brat,

bed-wetter, nasty pants.

Painkiller, painkiller, I have a new friend,

better than my old friend,

plugging holes in the brain:

Sigmund Freud, Sigmund Freud, Sigmund Freud, Cocaine!

I want a soft landing; let me float.

Once the seizure lifted me and threw me down.

I did not like it. I did not like lying there

on the floor looking up

through air like green water.

  

4.

And there is one so dark, a ghost,

it passes through the mesh of thought

without tearing a strand, whispering

destinies perceived true, pronouncing

sentences of death.

  

5.

A cloud, the absence of a noun, no name,

roaring far away in the summer

dark like a train, or a giant fan, or a highway that never stops.

The mind explodes in the dark of space,

unnursed by atmospheres,

as air raid sirens scream for blood

and I am only nerves, strung on constellations,

meridians and vectors quivering. A red and yellow

capsule invades the chemistry of thought; cathode rays blast

from the television screen and signals pass deep into space

until the stars are singing “Rosalita.” You

will not remember this night.

The Tender Forests Sigh, and the Soft Whirr of the Hygrometer Promises Oxidation of Iron, or: Born One-Hundred Five Years Ago Today

• Olivier Messiaen was born 105 years ago today. High Egoslavian Holy Day. 
• The interest-divergence dilemma between tech companies and NSA.
• Readers' supplement to Chris Hedge's piece on the white-hatting of Snowden.
• Against the police.
• When I visit the old iterations of this blog to search for a song or a poem (like I did for the Messiaen piece below the bullets, above the poem) I look at the blogrolls there to see both who I was reading and what I was writing to reflect on where I was then versus where I am now. Fuck, I once blogrolled the asshole TBogg in pathetic hopes his Malkin-Baiting Overlordness would recognize my existence. What a puny and craven partisan fuck I was. Point of this bullet being, of the Left Blegsylvanian Bleggal Overlords I once read daily I think the only one I still read regularly is Atrios, who's had his apostasies, perhaps not as severe as mine, but fuck more than most of those overlords I desperately wanted to notice me. Disclosure - he did me a few Kinds.
• For instance, Corrente finds two I no longer read.
• Which is not to suggest I'm not a puny and craven fuck now, I just don't root for the team in the bullet below anymore.
• Asshole hires asshole to try and save asshole's ass. 
• Blessed are the idiots.
• Change the world without taking power?
• Silliman's always generous litlinks.
• Fissure.
• 2013 end game.

SESTINA: AS THERE ARE SUPPORT GROUPS, THERE ARE SUPPORT WORDS

Albert Goldbarth

The name of his native country pronounced on a distant shore
could not please the ears of a traveller more than hearing
the words “nitrogen,” “oxidation of iron” and “hygrometer.” —Alexander von Humboldt, nineteenth-century scientist-explorer

When visiting a distant (and imponderable) shire,

one longs to hear the cry “Hygrometer!

Fresh hygrometer for sale!” Yes, and when the fair

sex sidles close and coyly murmurs “nitrogen”

into a burly masculine ear, I guarantee you: the translation

is very easy. The allurements of a local siren,

whispering the kind of patois a traveler like Lord Byron

favors, never fail to comfort, and to reassure,

evoking pleasant memories of one’s own beloved hygrometer

at home, kept fresh in Cosmoline and camphor

and awaiting one’s rearrival back in his native xenon and nitrogen.

Without these occasional reminiscences, any translation

from nation to nation, tongue to tongue, becomes a translation

difficult to sustain. I think of my grandmother: “We're not hirin’

today” “Go away” “Dumb Jew”—her share

of the language that greeted her here in the land of alien hygrometer

and freedom, where she was only one more funny-skirted for-

eigner yearning to hear a lulling Hungarian nitrogen

hum her to sleep. Eventually, of course, the American nitrogen

sufficed. Her daughter could speak, in free translation,

both uranium and argon; and her granddaughter gigs with Fire ’n

Ice, a skinhead punk-grunge group that performs in sheer

black nighties and clown wigs—she plays mean electric hygrometer

in the first set and then, for a twofer,

(very American, that) plays paper-and-comb. Far

out. She’s so fluent in various World Wide Webbery that nitrogen

in a thousand different inflections is her birthright, and almost any translation,

mind to mind, gender to gender, is second nature. “I earn

my keep, I party, I sleep” is her motto. Though she’s for-

tunate in having a lover who’s CEO at Hygrometer,

Potassium, Klein & Wong: it helps to pay the “hygrometer

man” when he knocks at the door. I won’t say that they fear

this guy exactly, but he’s a major badass nitrogen-

sucking cyberwired ninja-kicking shitheel (or, translation:

call him Sir). It makes one pine for a land where the birds all choir in

sweetly trilling melodies on a flower-scented shore,

and a translation sings all night. Row gen-

tly toward it. The tender forests sigh, and the soft whirr

of the hygrometer promises oxidation of iron. 

That We Use Them to Create Dogs in Our Image. That the Dogs in Their Mortarboards and Baseball Caps and Veils Crush Our Hubris with Their Unconcern

As a small petty person who enjoys my feeble outrage at unimportant objects I must admit that Penguin packaging the Morrissey autobiography in the same format as Penguin classics ruins all the Penguin classics I own to the point that I will buy an alternative copy rather than ever reread a Penguin classic again. A reminder:

• As a small petty person who enjoys my feeble outrage at unimportant objects I must admit the utterly predictable clusterfuck that is the Washington Racial Slurs delights me. Take a fucker like Little Daemon Snyder and add a clenched-face asshole like Mike Shanahan and clusterfuck was guaranteed. 
• Pity the distraught demoralized NSA employee.
• Dreaming of my own personal billionaire.
• Mandela: New Baas, Same and the Old Baas.
• True Christianity in action.
• I said I wasn't going to write about the wedding I attended this past Saturday here, and I'm not. I will mention I had not been down 95 from Springfield toward Richmond in years (and won't go down 95 from Springfield toward Richmond ever again if I can help it) so I had never seen the freakishly ugly and obscene Marine Corp Museum near Triangle before.
• Actually, I said I wasn't going to write about the wedding here. I haven't written about the wedding - and more specifically, my family, more specifically yet my father's generation, anywhere yet, though I reserve the right.
• { feuilleton }'s weekly links.
• New Inquiry's Sunday reads.
• Bridge.
• This bliss of ignorance is a fragile thing.
• What I'm reading (with mixed success, which is on me, not the novel).
• Below the poem, my next major crush.
• Would be next but I woke up with this in my head:

THE TRAGEDY OF HATS

Clarinda Harriss

is that you can never see the one you're wearing,

that no one believes the lies they tell,

that they grow to be more famous than you,

that you could die in one but you won't be buried in it.

That we use them to create dogs

in our own image. That the dogs

in their mortarboards and baseball caps and veils

crush our hubris with their unconcern.

That Norma Desmond's flirty cocktail hat flung aside

left a cowlick that doomed her. That two old ladies

catfighting in Hutzler's Better Dresses both wore flowered

straw. Of my grandmother the amateur hatmaker,

this legend: that the holdup man at the Mercantile

turned to say Madam I love your hat before

he shot the teller dead who'd giggled at her

homemade velvet roses. O happy tragedy of hats!

That they make us mimic classic gestures,

inspiring pleasure first, then pity and then fear.

See how we tip them, hold them prettily against the wind

or pull them off and mop our sweaty brows

like our beloved foolish dead in photographs.

Like farmers plowing under the ancient sun.

The Scrimmage of Appetite Everywhere, or: Born One-Hundred Years Ago Today

THE HEAVY BEAR THAT GOES WITH ME

Delmore Schwartz

“the withness of the body”

The heavy bear who goes with me,   

A manifold honey to smear his face,   

Clumsy and lumbering here and there,   

The central ton of every place,   

The hungry beating brutish one   

In love with candy, anger, and sleep,   

Crazy factotum, dishevelling all,   

Climbs the building, kicks the football,   

Boxes his brother in the hate-ridden city.

Breathing at my side, that heavy animal,   

That heavy bear who sleeps with me,   

Howls in his sleep for a world of sugar,   

A sweetness intimate as the water’s clasp,   

Howls in his sleep because the tight-rope   

Trembles and shows the darkness beneath.   

—The strutting show-off is terrified,   

Dressed in his dress-suit, bulging his pants,   

Trembles to think that his quivering meat   

Must finally wince to nothing at all.

That inescapable animal walks with me,

Has followed me since the black womb held,   

Moves where I move, distorting my gesture,   

A caricature, a swollen shadow,

A stupid clown of the spirit’s motive,   

Perplexes and affronts with his own darkness,   

The secret life of belly and bone,

Opaque, too near, my private, yet unknown,   

Stretches to embrace the very dear

With whom I would walk without him near,   

Touches her grossly, although a word

Would bare my heart and make me clear,   

Stumbles, flounders, and strives to be fed   

Dragging me with him in his mouthing care,   

Amid the hundred million of his kind,   

The scrimmage of appetite everywhere.

ALL NIGHT, ALL NIGHT

Delmore Schwartz

"I have been one acquainted with the night" - Robert Frost

Rode in the train all night, in the sick light. A bird
Flew parallel with a singular will. In daydream's moods and attitudes
The other passengers slumped, dozed, slept, read,
Waiting, and waiting for place to be displaced
On the exact track of safety or the rack of accident.

Looked out at the night, unable to distinguish
Lights in the towns of passage from the yellow lights
Numb on the ceiling. And the bird flew parallel and still
As the train shot forth the straight line of its whistle,
Forward on the taut tracks, piercing empty, familiar --

The bored center of this vision and condition looked and looked
Down through the slick pages of the magazine (seeking
The seen and the unseen) and his gaze fell down the well
Of the great darkness under the slick glitter,
And he was only one among eight million riders and readers.

And all the while under his empty smile the shaking drum
Of the long determined passage passed through him
By his body mimicked and echoed. And then the train
Like a suddenly storming rain, began to rush and thresh--
The silent or passive night, pressing and impressing
The patients' foreheads with a tightening-like image
Of the rushing engine proceeded by a shaft of light
Piercing the dark, changing and transforming the silence
Into a violence of foam, sound, smoke and succession.

A bored child went to get a cup of water,
And crushed the cup because the water too was
Boring and merely boredom's struggle.
The child, returning, looked over the shoulder
Of a man reading until he annoyed the shoulder.
A fat woman yawned and felt the liquid drops
Drip down the fleece of many dinners.

And the bird flew parallel and parallel flew
The black pencil lines of telephone posts, crucified,
At regular intervals, post after post
Of thrice crossed, blue-belled, anonymous trees.

And then the bird cried as if to all of us:

0 your life, your lonely life
What have you ever done with it,
And done with the great gift of consciousness?
What will you ever do with your life before death's knife
Provides the answer ultimate and appropriate?

As I for my part felt in my heart as one who falls,
Falls in a parachute, falls endlessly, and feel the vast
Draft of the abyss sucking him down and down,
An endlessly helplessly falling and appalled clown:

This is the way that night passes by, this
Is the overnight endless trip to the famous unfathomable abyss.