RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,165
(for the grotesqueries)
I was never able to tell my
own differences between
anger and frustration, or
hate and disdain. It all
just went on, as I grew;
noticing near every small
thing that was pushed out
in front of me - the way it
happens when you're growing.
People just tell you things,
twisting it all up so that by
the time it ends they can
stick some sort of flat
mortarboard and tassel on
you, whether high school
or college or whatever, and
expect that you'll then believe
and tout all that crap they've
plugged you with. It was
always different for me, and
I need to admit that, here and
now. My late-life aging now
has merely enraged me all the
more, perhaps even unmoored
me. I had to leave before any
further engagement took its
next step. I have now the
power of God - a silent and
forbearing power, which has
kept me from damage, and
from damaging others.
-
The market-place sucks. It's
endless, Godless bullshit,
peddled by endless, Godless,
bullshit people. End over
end in their spiral to Hell;
the hell of unreality, chimera
and illusion, and the dumb
bastards won't even own up to
it. Endless machinations, piles
of pills and the self-diagnosed
myopia of both a confusion
and a trap. Let them all rot.
Unbelievers can only marvel.
What it has produced for us -
those others, those who believe -
are lies and deceit, garbage and
rubble: Shabby-streets, fast-food
trash, broken plastic toys, unpainted
steps and stairways and porches
leftover and rotting - to crumble
in their dampness eternal. Windows
cracked and un-repaired, with
danger signs and warnings and
commands at every turn. Cars
everywhere, left in gutters to sag
or kept up so as to be a nuisance
of the large and the loud. Garish
people in their half-pajamas,
never knowing all day if it's
sleep or not. Children crank on
talking endlessly, or staring at
screens, useless even to
themselves as they wilt and
are destroyed from within.
Laziness becomes their
protest, with a lust
for degradation.
-
I'm beginning to sound like
a harping crank now, I suppose,
but what's left of this land that's
been taken from us as of, right
now, demands, or calls for, some
real response. Accountability is
a necessity, and there has been
none. This cannot just go on; it
must be pushed back. Part of
problem is the haughtiness of
the people running thing - the
educators and opinion molders
and the supposed giants of the day
who influence others. All that
'reverence' and worship at false
altars, they pose behind writers
and essayists who, to their uses,
get to be exalted while they are
betrayed as well. As Emerson
said about Death, 'At least you're
done with the dentist.' That was
saying something that mattered,
but of course you'll never hear
that from the elite who squander
what they use. They pretend at
high-minded solidity with
thought - of which they really
have none.
-
As I once lived, I'd be willing to
die, and along those same streets.
But I cannot - all my early days
were from nothing, and the doorways
and higher floors of learning and
experience that I undertook, in
NYC and elsewhere, simply do not
any longer exist. The atmospheres
and the environments around me
have changed. Drastically. All
the artists are dead. All the writers
too. There's little left except the
pale granola of idiocy, like some
transvestite in a carnival scene.
George Grosz comes back, to
rescue the world? This one? I
think not. There are now far too
many grotesqueries. As Joshua
said, with Caleb, to the assembled,
'The Lord is with us; fear them not.
This a good land, let us not walk
away.' And the glory of the Lord
appeared in the tabernacle and
before the people assembled.
That was then? This is now?
-
"The guts of the men sag hugely
and the monstrous buttocks of the
women seesaw painfully as they
tread the boardwalk in swollen
sneakers. A few steps from death,
these American elders defy all
decorum and dress as toddlers."
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