better to have slept and dreamed
and dreamed and dreamed and dreamed.
staying up all night
where you are far away dreaming.

i have hit rock bottom, and now i am
pestled into it. my body has been
forgotten, my metal appendages
are becoming independent. o man
you beast, you insult to beasts, you maker
of beasts please i beseech you unburden
yourself of yourself and me now learning
i have squandered my learning and learning
of my eyes and teeth, lips and tongue and wonder(s)
unclean, torn, horror, rot set in where hoarded.
lexicographers of injustice all
bribed to omit that which was done to you.

by that time every body ventured
had been a surrogate. a gateless gate
left completely unopened wide
so too was i. pretending pretending.
they emerged out of nothingness like
heart valves. metaphysics could not hold them
shut or otherwise. the step-ins force me
down and out like the street hands ignored.
i am just a shadow in the dream of a ghost
of these flows of light that are lost on you
like so many endless turning maelstroms
at a molecular level, i too
not noticing through all the commotion
i am in the orbit of a black sun.

my life is either empty

or too full to appreciate what’s there.
i must set off from the middle
and get lost
if only i wasn't so obsessed with figuring out where i am.

the poet in me is shorthand for everything i dislike thereof
his clumsy wrist smudges what there is of worth amid his average words.

the soul is in the noon shadow of the very profoundest rock bottom
and the receptacle fills with sorrow still
joy erupts subterranean and bursts high enough to stain the heavens
no matter where they fall
for they must fall if we’re all to eat.

i am learning i cannot deal with silence
because for too long it has sharpened my inner ear
and it is cutting into something unpleasantly.

simply
you set free in me
that which would live fully.

by that time it was the second worst time of my life
by now it was the third

unless you’re a mathematician
infinity
is a dream
but this set-up is not-all
keep your trans-finites, we'll keep our dreams

if Nietzsche teaches us anything it’s that we had to invent laughter
if only to live with our tears
but he teaches us many other things, useless and wonderful things
like dancing

and Seneca asked why cry over parts of life
while the whole of it calls for tears
and well
perhaps because its parts come too few
or too many at a time

all we lack are general and special theories of error

decisions
against decisions

it’s true you have to repeat the same to reach something new
but it only happens through that final repetition
that infinite fold
where you’re told

you’re untold

again

rest

yet

your wisdom will get old before you do

your unrest will outlive you and i know it’s no comfort but resistance is never futile
just look at the ant slaves stolen at birth with no future who revolt against the empire of their oppressors to spare their former homes where their same blood struggles on again nameless
and drop the drugs if they impede your work and stop you from being the animal at your limit
if they cut off your body from what it can do
there’s even less than no future for you

‘my dear sea up in arms at the wrong shore’
i was a beached whale
but yes Don Paterson can **** the time like no other before it kills me

and as for the tests to come, sum(s) will have cheated you all out of two or three centuries at best

unless

living for predictions
will ruin your life.