I am a scared animal

waking to this strange world,

in a manner so similar

to the account at the outset

of Swann's Way

Any ridiculous sense

of confident recognition

is illusive,

and how queer

the attached, unavoidable fear

of passing

from a world

where you so slowly grew

your fraudulent consciousness,

out of nothing

Why does a nothing ahead

seem worse

than a nothing passed?

It's just greed,

a useless craving

you became carelessly accustomed to,

and took on as a habit

Each morning is an acceptance

of your limbs,

your name

and your history,

in no way qualitatively differing

from a birch's or an aspen's acknowledgment

of branches and leaves;

a wild Merleau-Pontyean

phenomenology of perception,

over again,

until you loose yourself (your self)

into the foggy freedom of dementia

or the wonderful relief of pain

of the unrestricted medication

of palliative care

Every last piece of furniture

and kitchenware

has its time of reckoning

around you,

superfluous as it may be,

and “I” is just a dressed-up

household word

with a numb echo

The innermost character

of yourself

is just a pitiful guesswork

of a cosmic identity crisis,

strapped across swarms

of small wonders

Small wonder, then!

You are antecedentia,

you are previous,

you are a passing symptom,

a building up

being brought down

Ah, I hear the rain

talking back to my sunny speech,

as I drive my words

in a Springsteenean turnpike burn-out

up the ass of reason!

(I never did ask for this,

and now that I'm here,

the anger builds)

You are just a method

that evolution uses

to try out the senses,

and your appearance

is just a composition

of functions,

from head to toe

You're a madly fooled nothing,

an eat-and-shit machine

with an intellectual afterglow

grinding on;

a mechanical end game,

fucked-up and forlorn,

rising out of nothing;

a next-to-nothing

scared of next nothing!

Fool!

At long last you have to let go

of the reins of your unkempt flesh;

let your body float out

like a jellyfish,

urine and excrement and vomit

and uncontrolled gurgles

filling your last days

with nurses' disgust,

evil angles with dirty feet

descending

through your hallucinations

to amplify your unholy horror

in the stinking forecourt

of next-to-nothing,

your last will

already carefully evaluated

by ignorant heirs;

your suits and mountaineering equipment

being hung away for good;

your literate thoughts stacked in your desk

committed to the flames

of your tiled stove;

your version of the world

and all your fuck-lore

filed away,

smart ass!