How do words work?

Composed a small poem on the way back from the grocery store (hauling our weekly bounty of surprise produce from New Leaf), thinking of the way in which I'm pulled toward and always slightly repelled by symbols, allegories, lessons. 


(Title credit: my initial mishearing of the refrain of "Wordy Rappinghood," from the Tom Tom Club record I picked up in Nebraska this past weekend.)

Reforesting

Sunny now, but in the wind the trees

shed pieces of their hoarded silver on me

the excessive richness of this world forever spilling

over into the stiff hands of metaphor, whether

we give it there or no. And that portion

of its assets frozen --

                                   Too hard myself,

to ever chafe at the conditions of

the small security the world ekes out for us

and for itself, parent of limited means and vast

awkward benevolence. Together so we go reforesting

the landscape, wet tree upon

wet, dense, translucent tree.

I Dream Again Now of Spectacular Failures

I dream again now of spectacular failures,

to cushion me against the rude shocks

of success. In the unfortunate case

of my bosses, for instance, I will resoundingly

announce my verdict. (Tough but fair.) I'll let

the next blind shoulder that knocks into me

just push me down, and lie there in the street.

I will not suffer anyone to help

me up who is not of pure heart. (I will

wait hours, blocking traffic.) At last

I will become completely unembarrassable,

and make flamboyantly embarrassing

displays.

                 After this they will demand

so little. Once it was thought I would

not even go to college, my sickness be

my work. In such a state it's an accomplishment

to sleep eight hours soundly. In such a state,

to waste an afternoon in fabrication

of tiny beauties is still strange, but less so.

It is, at least, forgiven.

                                      So I

weakmindedly imagine. In truth in such

a state there are still bosses, they are doctors.

The work is not the sickness but the getting

well; one is demanded to perform it

with such haste, in such bad faith.

So what to do but to stitch closed that artery,

though it should mean forgetting the actual tint

and quickness of the blood.

________________________________________________________________

On the above: just a poemlet written on a train, in the blank spaces of an advertisement about airports and computers since I didn't have any paper. It doesn't rise to the status of anything much, I think, but it is a way of saying in brief how things are with me right now. There are so very many things I could say directly about what is happening in my job and my life but I no longer have any time to write them down at work because of them. People keep congratulating me, but most days I would rather have been fired. I think of quitting but probably will not be brave enough. I just got back from visiting a friend who never is afraid to quit bad jobs -- a good influence. My blue-collar sense of responsibility and my fear of angering everyone and also never finding another job again will likely keep me at it, even so. Truly I feel that the entire United States of America will castigate me as an ingrate if I deliberately leave such a very good job.

Another good influence is Laura Riding's Progress of Stories, which I have been reading lately for the first time. Some things she has to say:

"The wisest course was for the young to be grateful to the old and to show their gratitude by seeming to understand how important it was to have worries -- instead of behaving as if worries were a disease. It was this kind of delicacy that sold art." -- "The Incurable Virtue."

"And this was the difference between the world of self and the world of knowledge: that the world of knowledge was only and endless prolongation of uncertainty, while the world of self was a prolongation of fear of uncertainty." -- "Miss Banquett, or the Populating of Cosmania."

It's possible that I won't be able to update this blog in any regular way for several months, and then after that the substance of my life may be different enough that the concept of it will have to be changed entirely. To my very avid and loyal and very imaginary readers, I apologize.