The Madness of Crowds

The talk,
        the talk goes on forever;

unfocused, the tumult of noises sounds
like the symptom of a fever.

I pick out one voice after another,
disappointed as each
seems to me to be a foreign language
I cannot speak.

It’s the silent ones I can understand,
shrouded in loneliness or pensive thoughts
        or maybe just nothing at all.

Are they, like me,
        bewildered
                as to how the past
can blend
from Spring into Winter
so swiftly?

As the noise, the
        noise goes on forever…

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Returned now to habitude & ugly
old attitudes resume.

Refrain from razor-blades against
                                the skin
but now place them instead between the teeth
so during sleep the mouth
fills with blood

forcing shame to keep
a silence unredeemed
by graceful movement or delicate features;

eyes that do not see the open,
                                absent
of the pulsation, the differentiation
                                separating
life from death, death from dying.

Until, once again, the morning comes when
a mother bends to brush against
                                her child
& the animal rejoins the wild challenge
of existence:

begin a new day, with
different hunters, different prey yet
always the same ancient struggle
                                despite
the panic, the shit, the pain that afflicts
all living things.

Grace is acceptance, grace is
defiance;

for the hunter to eat the prey must die,
& for each to drink
the gaze must sink down toward the water.

There, where the reflection resides.

There, where there is nowhere

                            to hide.

Pathétique

For days I’ve said only
half of what I did and didn’t want to say,

& did all that I do every day:

tried to escape.

I don’t know what I’m doing anymore
& escape makes such a mess on the floor.

Maybe one day I’ll make a decision
I won’t regret again
        & again
            & again:

always the same,
always failing to stand up to myself
& forgetting
to hide from the scaring knowledge

that all things are pretence
yet everything is true…

but I’m lying to you
            again.

I have no pain
just a feeling of constant nausea
& all the talk of trying to escape

is just a way
to plead for sympathy;

pathetic, really,

            isn’t it?

Bipolarity in Post-Modernity

Here I’m alive; a mediocre, twice-
failed suicide,
                hypomanic
in hyperreality
writing unremarkable poetry,
failing to be
               Homo Economicus, but
I’m not the only one

I know;
        this system fucks us all,
why do you think so many of us are depressed?

                There is the voice,
have you heard it too?
                Telling you
it’s all your fault,
a flaw,
a weakness:
            
                – worthless piece of shit,
                can’t just get on with it.
                You’ve got so much privilege:
                just look at how much you can get when
                half the world lives on less than
                you earn in an hour.

                Don’t be so pathetic: you don’t deserve it –

Sometimes, I think the voice is right.

Sometimes,
I realise what it really is:
            
the propaganda of our disgusting society
that’s wormed its way inside of my psyche.

& yet knowing this doesn’t help

because
        this mind of mine can’t find
meaning in
the featherweight consolation
       of ironic distance.
I need
the romance of defiance;
I need
        all or nothing.

When Politics fought Art it ended
with a bullet in Mayakovsky’s heart,
for stamping on the throat of his own song;

when Art met Capital it ended
with Johnny Rotten complaining about homeless people
spoiling the view from his fucking disgusting L.A. mansion…

& when Politics starts fighting Capital,
that’s the sound of the revolution starting.

So now we have a choice to make:

“Revolution or suicide”**

* The Accursed Share – Georges Bataille
** Guy Debord

The thoughts that follow…

Crossing the unfeeling surface of this
                        ugly city,
lost in broken reveries &
                        the sophistry
of melancholy without origin,

thought begins
to blend into visceral abstraction:

the nausea of a simple creature
wanting only to know why it knows it
                        must suffer.

Wouldn’t it be better
not to think at all,
    to be
        
innocent & free

from the thoughts that follow
    the hollow feeling
        that everything

is meaningless?

                        …but meaning is a concept,

one of thought’s
        many children,
so without thought
            there would be no concept
                of meaning to be lost…

through a clumsy succession of steps I
                        try to accept
that the words bring this suffering & yet
are the only source of my salvation:

no affirmation without negation;

                        nothing is something,
            & something
                is nothing
without opposition…

this is what brings me back to a fleeting
            consolation,
        my one broken prize;
a thought
        that isn’t mine:

the tree is really rooted in the sky*;
    it is the light
falling continually from above
that provides
        the energy
needed
    to defy gravity,

by finding it’s way upwards while
sending roots
    deep into
        the earth.

* Human Personality – Simone Weil