I ran up the hill. Or, rather, huffed and puffed and did a good impression of a steam engine tackling a grade, mixed with the emotional stability of a fourteen year old girl.
Oh whyyyy…
(It’s the third time jogging out of practice. I’ll get it back.)
On the walk back home, I looked at all of the life blooming roadside, contrasting it with Twitter.
A single flower of vetch, purple and dewy on the bank, shatters the grimy screen I’m glued to, and the world we fight about comes pouring in, fresh and real and worth cherishing.
What a Wednesday.
It’s time for some pre-apocalyptic poetry, friends! You know, a jumbled, tangled meadow of thought, a real concern for where we’re headed, a workbench to scatter half-articulated thought and puzzle over it. If I put it in an essay, it would be insufferable, because I’d pretend to know the answer, and we’d all know I’m wrong.
The Conundrum of Middle Infinity
Part I - Last Night
The Bedford Boys
Never came back from their beach trip
The Beach Boys
Never went to Normandy
The Twitter boys
And Twitter girls
Express
¡OUTRAGE!
(There’s a lot to say.)
Just like you, I’m nobody and everybody,
Watching
Eating my popcorn seasoned with violence
Grown fair trade and sanctimonious
Mmmm mmmm.
(It’s better than yours.)
I slash my thoughts on the unblinking wall
In desperate black and white
If someone takes my advice
Will that codify it to wisdom that I should follow, too?
(I hope so.)
Cain couldn’t be an Instagram model
So he dropped his sword on bloody ground
picked up something worse
And handed it to me.
Part II - This Morning
The Goldfinches didn’t care
There are no bullets in a hayfield
Only a thousand million diamonds
Twinkling in grass
That nobody’s around to cut
The milkweed propagates sneakily
Readying a feast for butterflies
Before any of the farmers notice
The cliché azure sky doesn’t mind the description
“But it’s just another perfect day” I whine, worn out from trying to jog and improve (it doesn’t seem to be working). “How could I write that?”
“Not my problem” God shrugs, hands dusted with flour from the morning’s baking. “But for once, don’t avoid the riddle with a descent into melodrama, okay? It’s starting to tick me off. Tom Waits can get away with it, but you can’t, son.”
“Oh.”
The conundrum of Middle Infinity rushes in.
I turn to Socrates, his sandals smacking the modern pavement, and tell him
about that unseen hamster wheel squeaking away in the night
The futility of progress
The ease of slipping off to sleep counting the problems of the world
Never asking why I was awake in the first place
But suddenly it crushes me.
“There’s a radiance about the Mona Lisa smile of an ordinary Wednesday, don’t you think? The cliff a thousand miles high, smooth as a calendar, perhaps there’s cracks of the divine that I can grab, it seems there must be something there. You know, Sock, a reason.”
He pauses, ready to ask a question.