In Diegesis

Amid porters’ and stouts’ whirlwind sojourns,

tipsies might catch the bubbler or my journal; not chess tutorials, local Green periodicals,

bills needing paid: a mess of life’s un-loved, paper artifacts.

Musically-inspired, red-eyed lies: this earnest dimension is

your first try tonight. God; I admire you

more than I know. O’

hail, hail

my forgotten tearful dues sailing in your world’s

current, at home like a cemetery for the ego. You might get me

drunk like benign shrunk pride

caught in the tide: flailing energy forward

forever, washing ashore

without fail. Of course, dancing irises never know metaphysics is

chaos, but cripes – (under eyelids

I have a hunch). Forget it;

let’s get high and perhaps ascend to

a cozy conversational cresting end. After all,

life is at its dutiful best

when we societals lovingly defend:

freedom’s time, playful

ideas, civilized beauty.

A life artistic, so post -

modern; hopes are

tightening, Enlightenment

lovers; single

infinity, coping righteously

forever; transient beauty tingles

chaos symmetrically; great great great great grand -

fathers’ souls linger, busily being

presupposed by phenomenal birth; sentimental good will

protects its innocent invention, heaven’s tragic transcendence

from the ignorant womb; dramatically marching toward

vertical oblivion, suicidal hope like gravity

never ends; (but enough

about me).

I am not

a child asleep: discovering all the beautiful nothingness under blankets;

I am not

a waitress mom: hunched over, hiding in a cubby behind the register at the Philly Diner;

I am not, no, not

my roommate girlfriend lover: fearing love, sobbing over her fading sense of identity, emulating death under my body’s clothes;

But I am, yes, beyond all question

why.

What is the meaning of life?

I am lost in a field of monolithic inquiries:

some are thorny and lead near the brink of suicide,

some smell of unbridled will and childhood.

It is so strange to think, only answers are real;

The questions are only inventions.

Dancer friends put it to me: Ian, there is no field;

God, save me from the cliché.

I stabbed myself, see? I’m bleeding.

Thorns, here, there, all around.

Play your drums, stay in the sun; I’ll mind my own.

‘It is so strange to think’, that’s true; I could think of something else…

How about imagining myself as I stand but from two hundred feet up,

From the top of that building – Divine contextualization, yes!

I look up, but

Maybe I don’t really feel like it,

or I just don’t feel it, not like that one time

right after I finished reading that book.

It’s true that I’m bored, if that’s what you thought.

I’m a slave to laziness.

Wait a moment for the sweet relief of headphones; my dad bought this iPod.

I like to think, Civilization is lifting me up:

I am not a Cave Man or a Renaissance Man, but a Civilization Man!

- a man inspired who knows intimately many venues of thought, a man of infinite potential.

I will soar above the slaves and the escape artists

like a sightless cloud offering transient shade.

Truthfully, I know I am only the sound of disturbed, displaced, whooshing air, and you are the speeding car.

My existence depends on you, but you don’t feel my violent hug.

To you I am but an afterthought, infinitesimally incidental.

No one but me, and then only rarely, ever imagines my life as a duringthought.

I extract a thorn from my skin; a single drop of blood rains onto the sidewalk.

I watch it stain the stone.

Now my wounds are dry; my ears are busy.

For no reason

I stop still, dwarfed and answerless and beautiful: quite like a baby, I think.

I am.

With craned neck I see, through the field, a sunny projection from I can’t see where on the side of a skyscraper:

Who would have ever thought; it’s the meaning of life.

Some stories have a hard time, or could just take a while, getting the story-perceiver to realize what’s at stake. In the case of A Hard Day’s Night, your common American or Brit (or a lot of things, for that matter) already knows what’s at stake before even going into the film, and indeed the film’s entire arrangement I would argue serves to illustrate, dramatize, build and ultimately, to remind the viewer that the product, or resultant, of the playful actions of these four guys are the songs that they made, and the songs that they made are responsible for teaching millions about love.

(more…)

In a second, death beckons.

I once stood an enormous rock

and in a second, I didn’t fall and be destroyed,

but stayed a bench.

At a birthday party for a mean future-man;

we are all twelve years into

the forest, infinitely alive.

Decent ex-babies shoving paper titties in my face;

how long will I feed on the milk of human fists?

I tapped out, you win; now release my head.

You pulled your little fingers from my hair.

I remained a bench, raining on my wooden cheeks,

soaking the butt of my pants.

Not sure if I want to fall or

soar. Please, please

just don’t hurt me anymore.

Something must stop: all things transient,

but for now, at least,

I am something that I’m good at.