To be the thing
Dorothea Lasky
To be the name uttered, but not to have the burden to be
To be the name said, but not heard
To not breathe anymore, to be the thing
To be the thing being breathed
To not be about to die, to be already dead
To not have to disappoint
To not have the burden of being late
Or punctual
To not eat, to not have to eat
To not feel anything
To not be the one whose affect is criticized
To not pick up the fallen over boxes
To be everywhere but the boxes or plates
To not break the plates
To be beyond breaking
To have been broken
To not bear the burden of not being present
To not have to feel the pain of being hurt
To have transferred that pain over
So that hurt is only part of the imagination
And the imagination is everywhere, is every color
To not contain color, to be color
To not make sound, to be sound
To not have language, to echo, to plan language
To be the stream of words
To not be sad for
To not have those to be sad for
To not eat alone
To not fuck those who do not find your corpse attractive
To not fuck
Or stuff
To be ashes and non-placed
Not displaced, but to not be in any place
To enter the ocean on not a whim, but a physical force
Where there is no center
Where there is no safety
There never was
There was never any anger
There was never anything to look at
I never looked at anything
I just went and walked
I tried to love
But love is hopeless
And I have lost all hope, so bleak I am beyond
I am beyond what might be considered low
There is low nor high, space or time, I have
Gone away from that which is uttered
I have not burdened to be spoken of or spoken for
To croak everyday to the livelong bog
I do not speak a thing
I exist
No, no I don't
I never did
And you may have
But I never did
And you may have called out for me
But I was already gone
And I am already there
That which you speak of
I am already spoken for
In a world of light and ashes
They all call my name
They have waited for me
And now I know
I was always
Already there
With them
To just be, to be a being rather than a doing, feels me with an intensity of desire so vast the ocean, the universe, all the atoms and cells ever in existence, no, absolutely nothing is large enough to contain it.
Don't you ever just want to just be? If I were any part of this poem I would be either, "the stream of words" or "enter the ocean not on a whim, but a physical force" or perhaps "already there".
I've stopped asking people what they do. I don't care. No one does what they want, not really, in their working lives. The accountant really wanted to give his music a shot, but it wasn't practical, so he made numbers instead. The lawyer harbors a secret desire to paint botanical still-lifes, but argues for his client's right to this marital asset, and that marital asset, and that one too. The literature professor yearns to spend all her days guiding adventurous women through white water, yet fills her minutes lecturing about the ineluctable modality of...
You get the picture.
Thoreau said most "men live lives of quiet desperation". You know why? Because we're too afraid to just be who we are. Me included. It usually takes a major crisis to wake us up to a new possibility, and by then we have families, mortgages, bills, debt, etc. The stakes are always high, but feel so much higher than when we were younger, when so many doors of possibility were open, until we went about methodically slamming them and stepped through the door we allowed ourselves.
So how? How to get to where you want to be? And where is that?
I have no idea. Okay, actually, I have a glimmer of an idea.
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