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David Plantinga Jul 2021
For ***** to bounce is very rude,
Unless they dropped.  Ascendancy
Is boldness we don’t like to see.    
And roundness really is quite lewd.  
For spheres, directions are the same,
And favoring the vertical
Is impudent in a mere ball.  
A proper toy should be more tame.
I got the idea for this one from Kafka’s short story Blumfeld, an Elderly Bachelor.  Those weird bouncing ***** really freak me out, like something out of The Twilight Zone.  I’ve always thought this story was one of his best and under-appreciated.  I’ve never been able to find much critical literature that mentions it.
you hold your hands up
--to stop it?--
you, erbärmliches Behagen
--to fend it off?--
you pathetic creature
--reaching?-- 
**** yourself
--realing-- 
disgusting striving toward nothing
disregard your feeling and your noteworthiness 
nothing of value
--to stop it?--
you are nothing of value
--to fend it off?--
heart beating
wind howling
permeable gestures in the dark 
green-on-black horizon over an invisible sea
something could be out there
who knows
who asks
who sees
you do, in your wordless way
choke on your breath
muttering incongruously to yourself
was it here before-- has it come around again?
small, blue metal sphere, indifferent to you
flies into back of your head
where it has been
(indifferent or not different from your suffering,
its impact is one and the same with you)
please stay, you mumble as it darts away again

that's why, you wonder
that's why, you think
you are lost in your unsubstantiated thought
you blink
relieved everything came out this way
MMXXI

— The End —