PROCRASTINATION
By
Joe McDonald

Part I:

How often can I keep putting off everything in life that must be done to the point of frustration and despair?  

How often will my work sit and stare at me with the eyes of hungry children always whining their demands for my attention to each task always wanting my full being beyond my own inner abilities and doubt?

How often can I walk past the damaged concrete step on my own house that sneers at me everyday as I walk up to my front door?

How often can I make promises to old friends to get together, celebrate life, and not expect them to wait on my return call of cancelation because of illusionary diseases?

How often can I feign in my backyard the beauty of my roses, sipping white grape while the grass under my bare feet remains brown, coarse, and over grown with dandelions stifling all vegetation?

How often can I pledge my good faith to a worthy cause by ending up watching from the back row as the needs prosper or fail regardless of my lack of motivation?

How often will constant kicking of the can down the yellow brick road be considered the excellence of a long line of Shakespearean resumes?

How often will my lack of courage blind me to opportunities of abundance and force my family to a life of stagnant economic asperity?

How often will I consent to others disrespect of my mastery of skills to the verge of closing my mind to all that is important to dwell in a soup of anger, self-doubts, and ache?

How often will the peeling paint, blistering off of my house like shards of cheese at my wedding feast, augment my anguished indifference finding every physical, spiritual, and any other of a multitude  of “…Why not’s…” festering in my dome of “..Do it tomorrow’s…”?

How often can I rattle my saber of position, roar my battle cry of “Tomorrow” to postpone today’s tasks? Bundling them all into neat piles of future promise completions. All the time smiling a grin of a used car salesman.


How often can I sit on my couch on sunny Saturday mornings enjoying the sun rise? Its beams slowly sliding across the finished oak; warming my unkempt hovel to the boiling point that tuffs of unwanted cat fur dancing over the varnished grain like tumbleweeds in a Sam Pechinpah film. Yet, I sip my morning brew, acknowledging their existence but, my head movies are of other unattended illusions.

How often can my inability to act or respond be accepted by those who expect perfection in all things?

How often can I permit the disappointment of a moment fire the indifference toward the needs of the here and now?

How often will my journey up my front walk be changed from the joy of daffodils and hyacinths filling the air with aromas of lung cleansing delights only to rediscover the pine foliage  are still dressed in the lights of Christmas past?

How often will I put off leading because of failure of seeing the needs of those who need leadership? They cry out for direction but, plead for independence. I use the pleas to drown out the cries.

How often will I have the epiphany of a lifetime only to have inaction and fear
drag it down to the bowels of an enlighten brain ****?



Part II:

I keep plugging in the mechanism of delay to power the animal of the moment.

I blind myself over and over and over and over again again again again to my abilities of now in favor of promises of later.

I smell success in the air every time I do the nows but, the stench of celebration’s to come is easer, sweater, more in line with who I am and not who I want to be.

I hear the praise and accolades of present victories and in time I’ll drag my triumphs out over the gravel road of time until they have lost their luster.

I’ll blindly stare at the tube of adult babysitting, at images of various eye candies trying to escape my own drive to do and yet failing in this as well.

I can’t spit out the bitter taste of the act of putting everything off nor drown it in the wine of determination without repeated reminder that I am drinking from the same cup of vintage to come.

I spend much needed dollars and valued hours gorging myself on self-help aids and assistance. Only they too become part of the beast’s feast of my misused time.

I awake every Monday with dreams of a new but, I’m so accessible to countless distractions. By Friday I face the inevitable doom of looking back over the landscape of a week gone up in the flames of the undone.

I try to grab each day by its throat. Choke out the desired results. Only it offers the slights resistance and I let it go to torment me from its lair growling “…not now, not now, not now…”

I’ll spend time with my mate for life. Half of me is relishing the moments with her. Half is wandering over the tablets of what I haven’t done.

I have mismanaged, misused, balled up, blundered, fouled up, mishandled, muddled, muffed, spoiled, and fumbled the footballs of my life again and again avoiding all that has to be done now driven farther down the boulevard. Constantly stopping at any insignificant store front; staring at juvenile trinkets of distraction.

I have sinned over and over again. I offer prayers to anyone who will listen. Begging for the enlightenment to solve my weakness. “… quia pecccavi nimis cogitatione verbo et in cogitations, et in hoc opera, quod ego facere non, mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa…”



Part III:

Who else do I have to make suffer in confused patience waiting for the promised end results of my superficial excellence?

What has to be done to make me arise from the ash of self doubt, indecision, and fear to conquer this demon within my psyche?

Where are the answers I seek in my time of apathy?

Why has this inferior deity have such a grasp on me?

When! Again, when!!! When will I face this issue and start to find the peace of timely attainment?






(“… that I have sinned through my own fault in my thoughts and my words, in what I have done and what I have failed to do, through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault…”)
Part IV:

I have lived with this for over a half century.
Trying to climb out of the hole of misused time.
Falling back into my penitentiary.
Serving a sentence of intimate crime.


The venting is complete, pity-pats written down.
My confession exposed for all to share, witness.
If this public sacrament exposes me a clown.
Mock away; have your jest. For I could care less.


My Ginsberg rant is to open doors of avowals.
To aid in my cure; in hope start my salvation.
To trust myself; to believe in oneself. I am all.
To look into the morning glass willing a reincarnation.


Only I can face the beast and make it heel.
Down inside I have to find the straight for each day.
Try a new, lighter approach; a new Don Marquis feel.
“…procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday…”




April 2014

god isn't inclusive of some father christmas role managed by a being that designates rewards and punishments, at best it's, in literary terms, defined by a complexity of the ego, after all, the original revelatory principle was staged with a pronoun complex: without any definite rational causality likened to the cartesian imperative: thought therefore being (think therefore be); that cartesian imperative is categorised as a pronoun per se which is enable other categorisations of words to be akin (per se): magnetically misunderstood; which leaves many demented, early on or later on, but in modern times would building a gigantic skyscraper with only one room in it to hide a torso's weight of gold and a mummified body keep sanity on tiptoe? god is a complexity of the ego, as far as words can be expressed, we loose the ambiguity expressed by existentialists, who favoured "ego" over god, to feel less responsible than anyone could allow for the surd-language, the language written down and rarely heard from orpheus' lapping tongue showcasing a sudden thirst for song.*

rapture and rhapsody! rapture, and rhapsody!
overcast heavens  with the moon shy,
and shy indeed i, by the time i reached
ezra's canto lxvii (what beauty was built with
these numerals, greater and more eloquent
pillared, so what greater truths did the latin poets speak;
if latin is dead then akin be usage of a, b, c, d, e...
when the usage of these symbols dies then i will fall dead
at the final blow of their dis-usage as if  belshazzar seeing
fluorescent hebrew written on the wall just when the ****
ended)... and god did not dispute the endurance
of the argument  to keep a and z...
because under the romans no odd architecture
was summoned, and the hebrew nation flourished
by many religious sects of pharisee and the
sadducees, for a religious dispute be born
from the bethlehem star, and no slavery, but,
some might say, idle talk, for christ created
the 7-day-working week of constant commerce
by contesting a meagre collection of wheat shafts
as the adequate rebellion, basically capitalism,
and in a hangar of sold goods, live lobsters looking
at ghosts, walking in aisles of ample goods
wasted, bearably sold, with cheap constant music
heard to hush the "ambiance" of refrigerator lungs
wheezing a pseudo-beehive drone...
where once the land held a unity,
now the one of owning land earning a shelter
of factories over-produce and leave us
staring into an oblivion of recycling
and such feasts that will never take place...
hence i given sway away from silence
and invoking ezra's vampiric trill, with the sole
proof of vampires, r, being allowed
the statement: trill r roll a wheel stamp with heel,
and i too will cast a shadow over my shadow
to reveal my soul...
hence come the vampiric trill from only one
consonant, and let the frenzied atom river of
lost mumble in the other hum, the lost om
of the m tremble the mountains to shave and slide
mud and weight of rocks from its sideburns of
eager explorers anticipating a gratifying view:
let then the trilled r, the wheel, keep momentum,
for the activity of sisyphus rolling the boulder up
the hill, let the trilled r keep his faith intact
with the futility of the prescribed endeavour;
and so i will die making avowals,
and you, you will die making vows, in the shade
of the tree yearning for distinct processes
should it be involved, so minutely animate encrusted
is wholly animate things, in order that by its
minute movements, it would clarify wholly inanimate
things beneath its categorisation of animation via tropism;
where then the inanimate if not wholly god
should the orbits of celestial orbs fail,
and geologists fail to investigate mineral gold,
and should water never govern oesophagus lubrication,
or loose animation of boiling, dry residue at 180°C,
and the bone breaking ice of antarctica?
the only inanimate thing in existence is god,
as based on a theory posed by kierkegaard about
the changelessness of god: indeed contradictory
by categorical filtering to say a stone is inanimate,
and we animate (microscopic perspectives),
but the stone is also part of a stone mechanised to orbit
a shuddering sphere of fire that emits light.

Earth's satellite-- bloated and hung.
                  And there you were out of sight.
                  An accidental prize tucked in the crevice of tomorrow.
                  A lethal burrow abundant with barbed avowals.
In a sick dugout flourishing with axiom; an infestation.
You were;
                 The space tucked in a dream.
                 The conductor.
                 The lout existing in the basement.
                 The brute in love with disdain.
Plucking circumflex arteries- clumsy, unskilled.
Your mouth is a watering can.
Vena cava, then the right atrium.
Body parts for guitar strings.
I unravel and you're amused.
The exercise of reason, the functioning of the intellect.
Silence always stings.
                                     It feasts on the bone marrow.
                                     In the cracks of the asphalt,
                                     There you are again.
                                     Like a thief.
The Viper.
The hurricane smile I believed in.
Use me up and hang me out to dry with all the other bankrupt *****.
I'll still be dormant in the eye of your assault.

like a "sickness" in the stomach *** 7am
    after only going to bed at 2(am) -
       and not from any considerable mention /
allusion to a "lack of sleep";
     in that "sickness" is more or less
    akin to a metaphor of a centipede wriggling
about on a hamster wheel /
   a rollercoaster of sorts...

   tough-chew of a fiddling with imitation
   walking...
             prized pins in the feet that have
turned to custard-hardening numbness...
immediately a towing of verbiage
seems more apparent than ever...
   perhaps an interlude of

   'and here's one i prepared earlier'...
          
//

  besides: no one really wants to write something
maxim esque every other sentence:
feeding a readership of
exasperation and sighs - from what i've
heard writing maxims and / or aphorisms
can be a rather tedious undertaking -
for all the times that: when should be forgotten /
'suppose i dreamt it?'
              - and any other offer than can
come with: working out a best lived towards
the amnesiac astral domain...

it just came out of a deep need for perhaps
conversation - then again i am too tired -
             a tiredness that probably sounds better
if i push for some eloquence and
technicality - a miasma is too strong a word -
i'm trying to focus on ancient "things" -
   a chimera variation of a turtle -
               a talking sequoia (but an oak would
do just as well)
                                        and a jellyfish...
  from centuries old... lethargy...
                            with this living:
                                        a tryst a harangue
a search for catharsis -
                                 if need be for a mystery:
loitering on the promise of -
                                    by the gallows on
                                         a Sunday -
                                            in a year were all
such days could be: literally read as being borrowed
from the benevolence of
that                                monstrous UV bulb;
and her copperskinned serpent
                          monstrosities of trickle a tease
of skin's to sizzle: undertones of
                 thrashing water against a window
in the ear reach(ing) a pitch higher...                
                                                                                    //

towing too much space: nudging forward
a shy rubric - an omni- litany (by any other
prefix, squalor)
            between a noun like shy
    and an adjective shyness - formality:
a word genus out of identifying it as such -
a technicality of teaching / learning
                                this (a) language...

- but it dawns on me that i have perhaps
eroded too much of origin and thought
and perhaps even an originality via
the cameo cinema of memory (fickle creature),
but it also dawns on me that
perhaps 10 years apart (circa

                                          ) is enough "time" /
the same sort of space that would allow
a rereading of a work that's
             either Herr Watt (ha    ah      ha)
or a Thin Geon  
                           Anne's Wake -
                    for what use to i have for any
more of that democratic endeavour -
   if only to reprise upon: from the catacombs,
the labyrinth, the ancient library,
the depth of sea upon sea of paragraph-congesting
a drawing-up a coming up for air
akin to (verbatim)

- ****, Nick & the Naggies / Glugg &
    the 3 riddles - Chuff etc. -

   in the house of breathings lies the word,
all fairness. the walls are of rubinen and the glittergates
of elfinbone. the roof hereof is of massicious
jasper and a canopy of Tyrian awning rises and
still descends to it. a grape cluster of lights
hangs therebeneath and al the house is filled
with the breathings of her fairness,
  the fairness of fondance and the fairness of milk
and rhubarb and the fairness of roasted
meats and uniomargrits and the fairness of
promise with catatonia and avowals...

that from out of nowhere and for reason
other than: in order to write proper  & "proper":
tossing and fidgeting the little oystertongue
like imitation(?) i.e. forget conversational
standards of languid, lingo, linguine -
in a frock of half down and in a tuxedo of
half up
                for none of this could possibly
make it into: it's a Thursday morning
   by now all the newspapers have,
                               have been printed...
                  perhaps i'll tender a pause to imply:
pounce-stealthily-hidden in
                                                         wait:
  trainspotting & *****-tickling itch-not-itchy...

now that would be a-happening of sorts:
beside all the bog-****-sodden autobiographical
miasma and fog...
beside all the fog-coup-nudging shadow
with elbow and prayer to a nuke-UV-bulb...
a heart a sparrow a ribcage:
                when farting into the wind
when throwing a stick against a tree
in a forest -
                        when the unbelievably
corrupt sense of self is content, pure,
             by pure i'm only aiming at:
                           uninterrupted -
                           or... without a conjunction
like                                            and...

                that's before: that's a before veering
toward:                          image - begin, again:
a chandelier made from champagne flutes...
       on a side:
i can stomach divulging and bulging in
                                   shackles and monkey's
cackling imitation giggles -
some existential angst (although not something
grandiose as a 20th century sort
or "European" / 19th century precursor)
  
       on the periphery of some "now" (a variation
of when, what if - how, what?)
       such that it is a beautiful lie:
this life...
              and my newly  found estimation
of revising esteem for: not wriggling
in worm-food and silly-ink:
a medium of tedium of being taken
seriously (even if as a "reverse psychology"
reversal of joke)
    
       a puncture a wound that "word-thing"
compilation of:
       well beside something as interesting
as: it's an essay by a lucy ives and
                 it's an essay but for me it's more
a shortcut a footnote parade for my own:

   would it ever (at all) be better
to cure an itch by a pinch
   or in(deed) by a scratch...
             gravestones and heads of matches:
possibly very itchy specimens
it's not hard to imagine
******* on a pebble: no, not imagining
it to be a toffee (landrynek)
              
but honest to god and all that's
Port & Geese (Frugal, Portent - i forgot
the attached -al in s.p.e.l.l.i.n.g)
                 i have nothing equivalent to:
beba babe caco (clot)...
in my own in nomine patris
            since: what is much dissimilar
besides... "******": baba implies
               old woman / peasant woman /
         or woman as harangue (of sorts)...
even though babka =
                        a sort of cake (elevated
sponge, elevation = more bite to it)...
   then comes the suffixation of
the diminutive (adjective)
                             to the word...
babeczka, babusia... babcia
                                              (grandmother):
no language policing here or alt.
   wizardry / frothing at the "salad" i.e.
         concretely (in conc.) a D. Pignatari ref.

but for me: unless not congested (at least
like so) then latin is: loophole it see-through
it's almost flimsy it's barely visual:
why-because-it's-so-******-pragmatic
& why-because-it's-so-utensil-where-none-required
& economically sound
& sieve & water & thirst &
it's hardly an M like Ⰿ
                     or Ⱄ as S
                                let alone an I (pronoun)
i.e. not vowel(,) which is a syllable compound
of Ⱑ   (let alone Я) -
                          perhaps via some distinction
between vowel and pronoun
                    and aye i.e. yes...
             i̊ must say if the pronoun is so bothersome
and more: cut the head elsewhere
sınce ıt's there by no real dıstınctıon
when compared to              får
                          when compared to fát...
                    unless that dıstınctıon be made:
also elsewhere - ȷust like so (Jettıson Bothersome
& Blues)
unless: bothersome camouflage like
a broccoli in a sea of cauliflower akin to
ınınınınınınınınınınınınınınınınınınının
nnnnnnnnnnnnnınnnnnnn­nnnnnnnnn
when "oops" and Bob's your uncle
   i.e. ınınınınınınınınınıninınınınınınının

...never mind - i've been here before
but for the sake of convention (ctrl-c-ctrl-p)
     as clear as day:  
                                  i̊ might add...
       because it would not (otherwise)
  in any other way not suit me -
              thrice up ¡¡¡           thrice down !!!      

all in all: a leisure of an exercise in...
                              terms of waiting for such
pennies of a wording to drool off
a muse's heavenly gob.

I cross the bridge to nowhere, in the cold, in my underwear
Intense winds push me to edges, where I contemplate ledges
Looking down, spirits swim and stare; icy waters are their lair
I levitate and meditate; medicate with mental dredges
Such mundane nonchalance; my bridge leads to idiot savants

I would be crowned their King, kindred soul of unsound meditations
We've left our lost souls unburied, unhurried to right the carriage
Take a deep breath of the ether of dregs and suppurations
Take the one whom you love, not in marriage, in *******
On the bridge, I pass a young ponce and hear echoes of "Bon Chance!"

Purple rags greet me at the gate, royal flags of highest distinction
Winking my eye, scratching my head, the dead are now forgotten
Deep in my pit, so deep I forget, a pang of extinction
In my palace of darkness, no light will shine on the rotten
In the court of fools, coarse avowals can't be washed by the fonts

So lines are drawn by idiot courtiers and indigent warriors
Cities with no regret or sorrow, tomorrow trampled to tatters
Through smoke and burnt flesh we *****, we hope to soothe the worriers
We are all Babylonians, babbling on as if nothing matters
The bridges to nowhere we cross, we cross bridges to Babylons