Playing Chess With Mundanity To Survive To Write
Let them. I'm as supple as space on a balance beam.
Younger, I sought a name in the fountain mouths of humans
to actualize the pretension of what I hoped I was,
real carrot, real stick, real donkey, by consensus,
like reality, until I began to smell the methane,
and the swarms of squabbly seagulls, and uncover corpses,
and realized the pursuit of fame was just trying
to be something shiny in the garbage dumps
of other peoples' mouths and minds, and any thought
of a literary career came candling down after me
like a collapsed parachute that felt like a punctured lung.