In the Ghetto for Grottos

09/13/2006 6:52AM – 7:14 AM

Oh, go ye down, the bastard rat. He may, but not for long. Strong walls are rare left unencamped. The corporial form we wish forgotten, but what is white without mud’s bright contrast? The interbreeding of time and chance produces such strange forms as the lonely cannot help but know.

Forget me then, oh unseen eye, and leave me to my courser salts, wind-scattered crost unloved ice. The words, too old, the ideas much used, we brush again against ourselves and find nothing new to value. So bring out the old mule and parade him up and down the field, to the cackaling of hidden crows. We our ourselves again. Tired and used up before we’ve learned to walk. What hope, save lucky breaks?

But hope supines on rocky shores, and its rest goes deep enough to carry through late winters harsher light. Waking up, I saw my reflection in the bathroom mirror, and was entranced by its decrepit stare, but looked away as soon as the moment returned to me. Oh, rise ye up, rat bastard, and shelter me from my own worst wounds. The world will do for now. Too much, too much, there is no place for beloved, ugly words, save in the past remembered with scornful affection. You get up, you see. You get up and wash. You get up and go to work. This is the sole duty of man. Learning to love work for no sake but its own, is the task of one who does not wish to see. Blind me then and lead me to the rocky hill top where I can streach my arms and topple unseen enemies upon my head. Ha. You’re tweleve again. You think your words mean something. The best were used up the second time they were spoken, ten-thousand years ago, but at the least the rat bastard yet waves.