The Left Column

from poem page 159

Politics for Poets

the politics of indifference.

Not Posted

What's anything about anyway? People want to make sense of the world so they do too much information gathering. The world is going to be the same even if you don't know the intrequitcies of it. Whatever. The beat leaders of this beat period know that they have to step down at some point. Sooner is later than now. Not trying to tell people what to do. Just looking at the reality of it. Let's let it slide. This is a strike out. No money is being made. Game over.

Oh, how depressing these thoughts are. What point posting this drivil? Why am Istill typing? Not saying is a form of saying. I fail to not-say when make these posts. In this modern age we are all crying out for relevance.

"Listen to me. Listen to me."

'm doing it now. Nobody cares. Because very few people have anything real and new to say. It's all been posted before.

And so if But no one has anything real to say except look at those people over there and, my what a fuss they are carrying on about. World Politics. Eygpt is lost and nobody can find it anymore. It's like they are all on some strange drug and they don't remember where it is. They can see Lybia and Tunisia, Gaza, etc. But they can't find Eygpt. it is lost. Will these inanities not end?

Politics is dangerous, like a house with giant ice hanging from it. You can park there, ya. But there is ice right over your head. Right over the top of your car. Temperature goes up a couple of degrees those icicles might come crashing down onto your car's roof and crush it. That would be a story for the insurance company. Not a story I will tell. They might come and take your server.

Bring it to the swamp and throw it in. You, with the paranoid voice. But it's just the rantings of a character in a play. A play that will never be produced. No one will stage that play ever and it will descend to the lower basements of bad fiction; down below fictional states east of New Jersey and South of Long Island. Off in the nether-knowns, those mythical off-shore places where partying never ends.

Someone walks to the edge of the factory. They see the worker reading. "You're not suppose to do that"

"What. What am I doing." no body knows. He can't read anymore of it. It is taken away. It's a book that he liked and he wanted to read it. It came to him on his cell phone as a mobile app. It told him about gold mines and copper ore and igloos and commerce and far away shores and other off and in them's, very far and gone.

No body was reading his post so he decided to wonder off towards the hope that he might know something better, write a better story, not incite to hate or other awful thoughts.

Put out something that doesn't suck is that the same as putting out something good? Probably need to know what is good. That is a question that we can ask. "What are we asking about what is good.

And when you start asking that question you better expect that folks might not understand. Maybe you kind of already know that they are on to your word games and over parsings of thoughts, your looking into the mirror and seeing the other side of nowhere staring back at you and asking questions like "what do you mean by good?"

So, if that is the route that you take when you interact with the people that you love: you ask for the definition of "good", and you do that every time you interact with someone . . . don't you kind of get that you are actually just driving that person (those people) away from you? If that is what you want to do, then persist. And some boys do this far off into their older ages. Dissipating. Not understanding why nobody comes around to visit them anymore.

~ OK Now.

written Jan 31 2011

The Susquahanna River, Pennsylvania from
last fall.


     
 I haven't been this manic since
   I thought that she'd left me
       he said
 the dialog not scripted,
   the moment passes with him shattering there
  on the stage - such bliss of perfection in honesty:
  Don't read to me lies they've concocted
           to explain away the manic moods of a clown
     Don't expect me to say those lies in a crowded room like the 
        evening news.
   Don't tell me how to live my life but
         yes, help me if I've fallen down.

  But he hadn't fallen.
    He'd had a bad night.
 He was the same guy that they loved from before
     except that they didn't 
       love him anymore.

  How quickly they want to kill the clown
   when he shows them a mirror
    so they can imagine him to be
  whoever it is that they want to see.

  If I listen to you
     then I won't be doing my own thing.
  it distracts me.

  If I don't listen to you
       then what is the point of trying
    to write something
      that you'd want to read?

  I stand on the hill with my Frequency Modulated brain
    tuned in to the winds of the wet Springtime
   up on a hilltop in a gale.

  Is that the moon
     coming from behind the buildings?
  Is that the jester
      crying?

  do you think that a man
     when his kids are taken away
   and he isn't getting his pay
  is off and when he says
        that it isn't the biz
  of the crowd who watches 
     on their televisions
   won't go out
      for a night on the town.
  Don't know
    any working girls
  if if they don't 
   buy the product.

   Is that the moon?  

  Do you love
    what he brings?
  when he sings?
   when he moves and walks that way
   and spouts out
     the bland cliche?

  Can't a clown
   have a manic
      moment
  in a panic
   on the run
 from the realization
   that he isn't fooling anyone
       The Fool.

  Don't you love him anyway
    when he trips upon the stage
      and tells you 
    that hard work pays?
  He worked his first working years
     in a drug induced daze
  and we all paid to see him.
   Some folks even wished
     that they could be him.
 stick it in a museum.

  A clown can chase the crack rock
    as it rolls off the table in a wind
       that just kicked in
  really it's just from the wind machine.
    I  really wouldn't want to be him.
  Its the scene from a movie
    about envy and despair
   when you find that no one's there
 who you don't have to pay
  and you've got nothing left to say
  and Hollywood 
     wants to throw you away.

  It's a movie.  It's a movie
  It's a top rated show.
   Travel around the world
   and then tell me where you go
     If you are so alone
   what is it you know.

  I really am not manic
    in public
  on purpose.




     from Poems 189