Polar
Pugilist, №2
Sometimes,
when the silence of a lonely room
becomes too thick to ignore,
I start to worry that
my pact with honesty,
my commitment to mask-free living,
is but a mask itself;
a mask that I wears
to keep
I
from realizing
that no romantic spin,
and no amount of intellectualizing
will ever fully convince
I
that a life walled by ink and paper —
a life spent
burning in the pixalated glow
of LCDs —
will ever be as noble,
or worse,
as meaningful
as
I
likes to think it is.
Sometimes,
when the universe conducts what is obviously
an orchestra:
a roaring fan, a rumbling AC unit, the faint whirr of a humidifier;
distant, drunken laughter; decomposing thoughts; tinnitus;
I pity those who seek temples overseas
just to fail at finding what floods my room in torrents;
I can’t help but laugh a bit. Sorry.
How does someone spend a lifetime
convincing others to pretend
that a soul so insecure is destined to do or be
what it’ll die pretending to do or be?
Can I not chuckle just a bit
when I so freely do and am
that and more
in every life I breathe
and put to death,
daily,
with my pen
for
‘shits and giggles’?
What do we call that?
Overdue therapy?
Depression?
Mania?
Manic depression?
Genius?
Madness?
Insanity?
Outsanity?
Bipolarity?
Bye, polarity?
Call it what you will
(though I doubt you’ll ever notice it).
As for me,
I
will call it nothing,
and
call myself
a grandfather clock.
Neither you
or I
will ever hear myself
admit it
at the height of any throw,
but
in moments like this,
mid-swing,
when I glide
through silky smooth inertia,
I sometimes
hear I
hear me
hear myself
hear us,
call it what it is
through breathy laughter:
l
i
v
i
n
g
.
Momentum will escape my grip
someday.
When it does,
you’ll see me smile,
and let it swing this
old clock
to the ground.
Some of you will think to pity me;
pity the life
I
lived.
Don’t.
If you’re not whipping up
momentum
or swinging yourself
to pieces
behind me
or
beside me,
know that it is
I
who pities you.
For even if
I,
if we,
forget it all,
I’ll remember that
I lived.
Keep your structure.
Keep your time.
Your precious, precious time.
Funny — the names you give the things
you do with it:
‘investing,’
‘saving,’
‘making the most.’
Good god.
Clever.
Me?
I
abandoned euphemisms
long ago;
we call prostitution
by her name
these days.
But you don’t want to hear that.
Safeguards,
certainty,
and
precious, precious
time.
You’ve claimed more than you can track
but what is time
to a rusty pendelum that
never swings?
Keep it all and let us swing,
and swing,
and swing,
and swing;
until we creak
and topple,
and shatter ourselves
to bits!
How much pity
is there really
in those
bright green eyes?
How many
‘sorries’
can you squeeze
through
clenched teeth?
Envy never fails to stiffen jaws.
WIll you continue pretending
not to hear it?
Will you call it ‘noise’
and drown
your guilt
to fall in line
with the inquisitors?
But you don’t even have to listen,
there it is: doubt;
reverberating in your eardrums,
whirring through
my whirlwind
of distorted
tics
and
tocs.
There they are: the questions,
sittring in the chaos
of this pendelums’
last
momentous
swings.
You can’t escape it —
you can’t ignore something
slithering
so ruthlessly
through your spine.
What do you call it?
‘Squeaks’?
‘Babble’?
‘Delusions?’
‘Paranoia?’
Please.
Sometimes,
when insults sound more like sobs,
and arrogance looks more like fear,
I think of their
lifeless,
rigid
gears
buried
deep within
their apathy;
their
motionless,
feeble hands
petrified
at the witching hour,
and wonder
what they call themselves
when
they’re
alone.
