Tuesday, August 20, 2019

Losing Everything as You Go and Go and Go




  • Yesterday on twitter a debate on which shitty fast food chain makes the best factory farmed mistreated chicken harvested by underpaid over-worked and mistreated workers sandwich
  • And a re-litigation by motherfucking professional Democrats on Susan Sarandon and how she single-handedly brought Trump to power and will prevent the coronation of rightful King Biden
  • The ways in which writing may or not resemble sex
  • August - as someone born in August let me say Fuck August, the stupidest month of the year in Clusterfuckistan as a whole, Blegsylvania too, my stringtowns especially









         

GIFT PLANET

Brenda Shaughnessy

My six-year-old said “I don’t know time.” She already knows it’s unknowable. Let it be always a stranger she walks wide around.
 
I fantasize about outer space as if I have some relation to it besides being an animal in its zoo. No visitors. No matter how far I travel on earth I wind up sitting in rooms.
 
Wind up running all over towns and streets the same. Then get hungry as anywhere, again. Going anyplace, I think: I never want to go home and I can’t wait to be home.
         
All travelling’s a way to imagine having a home to leave or return to.
         
The shame of never leaving home. The anguish of no home. Changing house keys on the unchanged ring. The ring is the home, the thing inside trees.
         
Claiming a tree “mine.”

Car feels like a pod, an exoskeleton, a place inside me. Car short for “carapace.”
       
I blame the weather, blame myself if the weather is “nice.” Tell myself the weather ruined my plans, though it’s me ruined the weather’s.
     
Plan: like plane like plain like pain/pane. Like planet. Plan acting like an overlay on everything most elemental. Trying to make everything go according to it—feelings, food, flight, ordinariness, the very earth.
           
Stop already. Stop as if you can. As if you can breathe back in your own baby, your two, your three. 
           
Breathe out all the ones you never had. Breathe in one two three. Breathe out all the others.
           
I don’t want to be cremated. I want to be part of earth. Space may be my original home but I only remember here.
           
I cling to this life. I’ve taped myself to it like a card on a gift. Happy birthday! Many happy returns and hope it’s lots of fun! We miss you! Love, Me.
       
A gift is always an exchange of energy. Like water boiling, like photosynthesis. Inside the box is a water pitcher and a picture of us together as we were when the photo was taken.
             
Now it’s given. It’s only a copy, but the original was a moment and was burned up, caloric.
       
Simone says before bed, “I’m imagining a strawberry automatically drawn. I dream so much when I’m awake.”
       
When I learned to tell time I told it. I told it so; I stopped listening to what it tried to tell me: You’re already losing everything as you go and go and go.

6 comments:

  1. that's a good looking cat

    as far as 'losing everything' as the pythons put it in 'life of brian' -

    you come from nothing
    you go back to nothing
    what have you lost? nothing!

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  2. Thankee. Still looking for the Original Trout Mask (accept no substitutes / replicas).

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  3. TMR is indeed as beautiful as discordant can get.

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  4. It's only just occurred to me that editors craft headings for a number of reasons that don't serve journalistic ends, but one as likely as any would be to keep me from reading the work of an author I'd otherwise have appreciated, maybe even found enlightening.

    ReplyDelete