Diminishing Returns
I.
Bookstore windows can be
So interesting,
Musk at 30% off, or
The latest report on
The “last president,”
The latest missive from
A former president.
II.
I recall my days at
A bookstore in New York,
And “fixing” the windows,
By designing a mélange
Of effects and provocations,
To provoke passersby,
And to placate management.
III.
And I recall my own books
In windows in various
Places in various cities,
Images sent by passersby,
Or images I took self-consciously,
Always looking for something
Unbeknownst to me.
IV.
What was it, celebrity or fame?
Game and swerve, atoms shifting,
Once again, per Dolar and Lucretius?
The absurdist gambit,
The authorial game,
Stendhal or Rousseau,
Thoreau or Eliot?
V.
Yet the sense was always
No sense, or lost senses,
Lost to time and, therefore,
Wildly untimely and bold.
Beyond belief or any catechism
That might serve as register,
Reality check, or censor.
VI.
I’ve no idea where
These messages come from,
Or why they bother me
At even-ing hour,
And make their incessant
Impression upon an always
Diminishing mind “out of time.”
VII.
What prevails is the “voice”
Of works and life-works,
Against the travails of useless
And pointless egotism,
The gist of what has come
To pass as justification
For works as product devoid of life.
VIII.
This absurdist indictment
Or preposterous presentism,
Is the moment of the great
Elective transfiguration,
Of works and of souls,
All souls depleted in
Works as life-works.
IX.
This personal Alverno,
Not lost cause,
Nor self-serving vision,
As Stigmata of the Irreal,
Portends the vision of
The catachresis given
To works as life-work.
