What is it?
That is the question, it is the only question that matters. And there it is. It’s there when you walk along the street beside the canal as the lights shimmer across the water, little patterns created by the jostling of boats, numbers that float, figures you figure must mean something. Or why else do they melt and disappear? And when you look closer in the morning mirror, they reappear as the merest of glimmers, a glint, then a smudge that smears, taking hold of your deepest fears. Who am I? Am I real? I feel like I am, because I think, but why, oh why, am I here?
It’s there when you log on, when you log in to watch Netflix and chill, and suddenly everything remains still, and outside in the pouring rain, there is an apparition that reminds you of Ezra, Ezra Pound. It is there, hanging so bright like strings of light, in flashes and floods it comes in streams, and it drums on your windowpane, softly tapping on the glass, waiting for its half chance. And if and when you see something new, at least you think you do, but it can’t be true because nothing has changed. It is just a face from yesterday you saw today, like a reflection, a mere refraction, a beginning and an ending, a world bending, a theory of everything explained by its opposite. It is there. It is there like a stain on a shirt, even though you washed it, washed it cold and washed it hot, washed it clean, but it is not…clean. It is tangerine and green, so many greens and orange, or some color akin that is locked in a Crayola Crayon tin. Say hi, say Hola. Say L-O-L-A. Lola…it’s in your Coca-Cola, even if you didn’t mix it with rum, you might get some.
Where is it?
It’s there, right there, and maybe you didn’t care, you don’t care, and the man in the stair is not really there, because you didn’t see him yesterday, and he wasn’t there today, but you know he’s in the creases and the cracks, and he is always coming back like a weed; he grows like a weed, and Ariadne needs you to find her, so she leaves a clue just for you she throws out a line. Will you find it in time?
Was it there?
It was there, but it unravels, becomes loose and limp, a lifeless form out of the norm, and after all your travels it remains connected to you at the hip like a string, a nameless thing, a hanger on following each step, each stop, every spot and space like a doppelganger, like a paper that traces that shapes you make, the letters, the language can sometimes be meaningless and yet we say it is not so, that this word means something, it means this or that, and we’ve all agreed what’s made up and what’s not, but still you’re not convinced because it is there, still there, and always there, and you are suddenly less sure, less confident, and you squeal and you squirm as your resolve drops down, hits hard, hits firm into the throes of Edgar Allen Poe’s Pit and the Pendulum.
What is it?
Control. Is it control? And all these things I do are known. They’ve previously been shown in a film, on a scroll, projected on a wall in a cave next to a sign that says: Jesus Saves. Every action is but a repetition, a reenactment, a redo that can’t be redone because it is predetermined, and anyway, it is already writ. Is that it? Merely a means to an end, a process not a product, or vice versa? Come now, let us not pretend those blue jeans just blend in, no holes, and all told, the rhymes hold the truth. Beauty is wasted on youth. Know thyself. Do not put your future on too high a shelf. You may not be able to reach it. Admit it, the sky is not the limit.
I see it on the beach, in a river with the running rocks, where nature talks and nobody listens, it sighs, because all things flow and nothing abides, they run like rabbits to hide, trying to escape the cyanide spewing from the machines that poison us. All you girls and boys, wake up, wake up sleepy head, rise and shine, this is no time for sleep. Go forth and seek it in a cloudy sky, no glimpse of sun, just a million shades of grey pulled over my eyes, rolled down from the top, the window not open a crack but still it seeps in, it creeps in, a layer upon a layer slouching in the back of the room, scribbling on a desk these lines that only blur; go seek it out in the bluest blue and all the forgotten hues, from the lonely songbirds to the owls, the greatest minds and Ginsberg’s Howl, fuel for fire, Dylan’s Desire and his words, this world out of time that slowly comes undone and thaws.
Go dog go, drink coffee. Oh, come ride my seesaw. Come skip rope, but don’t get broke by another back, by stepping on its crack. I told you so, oh, your mother should know. Up high and down low, too slow Joe, or is it Jack who works in a button factory with a wife, a kid, and a family? If you climb that beanstalk, please come back and don’t get lost like Little Boy Peep and all his sheep. Some advice: Don’t talk to strangers, never take their candy, though it is dandy, but liquor is quicker, never been sicker, at least with a beer you are in the clear, but I can’t stand the taste…So, I waste away in here, wishing I could just disappear…where am I? In the distance, rather faint, I spy an oasis, but ain’t no angel there to greet me. Can you please tell me where that place is?
Where is it?
It is there in my coffee, like images in the steam and mist rings, flirty flowers formed in foam, dirty number 9 in the bubble dancing like a queen, like a virgin, like a version of me I have never seen. Oh, what I am but these lines on a map, a crisscross of roads, leading in and leading out, leading away from here, some thick and some thin, and some doing me in, some with barely a trace, and if I say I can’t remember that place it is not necessarily that it didn’t leave a mark because sometimes I forget the important things, sometimes I lose touch. Other times, it is not enough.
What is it?
Do not ask this in the rooms where people come and go, talking about Rimbaud and Verlaine, drinking plain as Jane Merlot and bawdy Bardot, with a different mask for everyone except the one you don’t know, who or what…is this supposed to show?
What is it but a place you visit, a question you inhabit, while watching the detective keep tabs on it. Every day he writes the book, and though you like to look, you don’t see anything at all because it has you, it has enthralled and entertained you, locked you in tight, so you don’t go out at night. You stay in and keep saying “I’ll watch and wait and contemplate,” and among the shadows on the wall you speculate and postulate, and though the mightiest might articulate the great meaning of it all, you defer because you are suddenly not sure…what it is…
What is it? What is the matrix?
