late I come home and go to bed the thoughts keep me up at night, swarming and buzzing around my head, even when I count to a hundred thousand and shut my eyes as tight as I can, I still hear them thinking — rise ’n shine, sleepy head, it’s time to get out of bed — and as long as they’re still thinking, I’m still breathing but nothing in life or death is worse than being tormented by your own thoughts day and night, nonstop, around-the-clock — I tell some of them — can’t you wait until morning? Now’s not a good time. An idea sticks in my mind, but I can’t think it through right now — so it hangs there, thinking, suspended in midair while others try to push and shove it out of the way, it hangs there livid — timid, it’s the best one so far — my first choice — even though it’s hanging over my dreams, keeping me awake and disturbing all the other ideas that won’t let me sleep either — first thing in the morning I’ll have to write them down. As if thoughts were as self-absorbed as assumptions or presumptions, presuming categorically false and phallic assumptions and supposing or presupposing supposed suppositions assuming nothing about anything and presupposing preposterous presumptions, forcing themselves on valid ones that bow to the boss obediently — because he is the boss — that’s why — because he bosses them around mindlessly because if he stopped to think he would shrink from the sheer force of his impotence — the boss of force, not the whim, ah, if only the whim were more forceful when it comes spiraling down on top of them so precipitately, oh good Lord, you sound like Neruda with so many categorically presumptive adverbs that leave the mind on a precipice precipitating precipitately, you don’t need so many ly’s to precipitate if you go straight to the point without beating around the bush and spread your wings and fly, you fly like a straight arrow and hit the thought, bull’s-eye, and you’re brilliant, sparkling like a flawless diamond (sorry, but I love little flaws), you don’t know what I’m talking about, but that doesn’t stop you from contradicting me, to make me lose my train of thought, if I’m not as hardy as a party that parties hardy until the bad mood fades because it runs out of breath and withdraws its claws, the claws of its paws, the bedrock of its foundation, there, between a rock and a hard place, it catches a catnap but it’s not a cat napping, it’s a dog panting and it steps into the cat-trap with all four paws. The truth has no sub-clauses or subterfuge, crutches or canes — it’s not arthritic or grouchy — it howls at the infinite like a dog and expects miracles to rain from the sky — it won’t drown in a glass of water, fall for sugar pills, or hobble around on a cast and crutches. I’ve often preached in my sermons (not to sing my own praises or eat pistachios like a caged canary swinging on a perch) — I’m already gone, but I keep going — away from all sorts of cages — I seized the chance to walk out that door as if it were my own house and never look back. No, I won’t say no to subjunctive clauses or to double brackets that close when they’re supposed to, or to single brackets that stay open, searching in vain for the cat’s four paws of the subjunctive clause in the wolf’s jaws where they’ll never see the light of day, and I won’t say no to the heart of darkness or to the dark of day, and I won’t say no to either side that thinks it speaks the infinite truth because neither one crosses the dividing line or because two parallel lines never meet their grief. I have to retrace my steps — here and there — to find something I lost — places I feel good — because I can’t feel myself anywhere — only in brief stages where nothing feels good — and it’s not that I feel bad — it’s that the wanderer
in me only feels good in continual motion — crossing frontiers without settling frontiers — in hotels — where strangers meet without ever meeting — I feel good when I’m lost — that’s the truth — when I’m really lost, I don’t feel lost — I feel the dynamics of my movement or the method of my youth — I don’t cross words with anyone — people disrupt the creative process — sniffing and poking around — coming and going — and leaving — when a passing intuition roams around uncertain — leaving danger and mountains and houses and fountains and restaurants behind — leaving everything behind — and when I leave, I’ll leave you all behind, the way day leaves night when it turns dark, the way night leaves day when it turns light, when a lantern glows in the middle of the night — with the light of my owl eyes — and it’s not that there aren’t any truths or things to believe in, or that I haven’t been chained down myself, it’s just that my being walks around life — like a night watchman — I don’t know what I have to say, I make a mistake, scribble it out, and say it another way — and I still haven’t said what I have to say because I still haven’t voiced the rush I feel when I’m walking — the lack of permanence and instability — the rush to cut the ribbon and rip open the present — not that it’s important or urgent — what’s important is that I continue to leave behind what happens, what has to happen, what should have happened by now, and it lightened the load of my suitcases, the spiritual baggage of my being that sends its being onward with trumpets heralding the season of Advent and the Annunciation, the Coming, and I’ll be right up front when the Coming comes because I went looking for it on my own two legs, and I said goodbye to all the setbacks — how strange, I rose to a higher state of being without elevators, carriers, transitions, or transports — I got