mmmdcxlii

Am I Going to Take Control?
(Bring in the Pep Squad)

     The beginning of the middle is like that.
                                    —John Ashbery

This morning’s wishful thinking
dissolves into a panic of maniac
ally checking items off the to do
list: item, check; item, check;
item, check; and like some
surrealist landscape, the list
keeps enlarging, engorges
the landscape, even. Help?!
Yesterday, I swore I was going
to take control, but what did that
mean, exactly? I think, at the time,
it meant a series of public, full-bodied
protests, a yelling and a screaming to
the world, as if the world doesn’t know
what’s up. Me? In a series of full-bodied,
public, loud protests. A catalyst for? A what?
Knowing me better this morning, now I’m doing
what I do, what I know, making lists that grow,
virtually penciling in an eager if not disciplined
checkmark or two while mostly just thrumming
through poetry and such in books stacked like
pancakes about to lean further than the Tower of
Pisa or collapse like the endgame of a stomach-
churning challenge of Jenga on the coffee table
that sits atop the somewhat soiled square of
somewhat hip-looking carpet found one day
in some Nob Hill alley and placed toot sweet
under said coffee table in the very own living
room in a home that might have been said to
house family, the comings and goings of, a
self-proclaimed, self-made one, not the kind
you might be able to donate a kidney to or
give random shout-outs toward on birthdays
and random holidays (mostly Christmas and
Thanksgiving, if it comes down to it, although
this choice is possible, just not obligatory?). It’s
the detritus on the long gone carpet that’s giving
me pause, if not a bit of the heebie-jeebies at
the moment (Item, check? Item, half-check?),
and that’s perhaps because in moving about
and among the stacked pancakes that are
my morning reading and the list growing ever
exponentially on my screen, which I’ve sent
somewhere to the back of the room, not to
be currently seen (out of sight, out of mind,
if only) to put these words in some order so
that I can check yet another item off of what
we in my profession like to make, a sheet
that I suppose you’d call an “impossible
list” – one that literally can never be finally
ticked completely off (like I refuse to get
today). Ticked off, that is, trying with discipline
and with checkmarks and scanning lyrics hurly-
burly as a catalyst to create my own, while in
literary correspondence with (by way of simply
devouring works by) Cedar Sigo, Camille Roy,
Jack Spicer, John Ashbery, Julien Poirier–like
always, a usual suspect or three, alongside at

least one wild card thrown in for good measure–
because I’ve done this quite long enough to
know a fairly decent performance algorithm
... like the banana walnut pancakes I used to
order in the Hayes Valley building formerly
known as Stacks. What amazing pancakes
they were, too. Here was yet another place,
like that living room with the somewhat soiled
but fortuitously found square of carpet upon
which to place a coffee table, adding flair and
comfort to an already comfortable space
that (for years, by then) was often filled
with family; the best kind of family (one
would think – or at least I did), in which a
donated kidney might be an impossibility,
but the satisfaction and pride and comfort
and contentment in knowing [sic] that this
was the family I built on my own, was my
own, the template of what one should be,
was [sic] the ideal, the Platonic family...
now long gone, no family at all, it turns
out, at least not one in the sense that
you can’t shake family. And you
can shake family (the ones to
whom you might could donate a
kidney, even) – these lamentations.
Is that what they really are? A
kvetching? A failing that I keep
bringing all that I do to move
forward into, daring a life of
failure henceforth, resigned to
one, god forbid, life, failure that
it is? Why do I do such a thing
to myself on such a regular
basis? Which would definitely
be tragedy, yes? And yet,
this is no tragedy, dammit!
Dig deep for that emphasis,
for that feeling, for the hope
fulness that, if family is what
I want, in whatever sense,
family is what I get. Speak
ing of which, yes, I could be
well on my way now to such
a thing, perhaps a repeat
offense (and so what if it is?),
No? Yes? That’s what living
and learning is all about, right?
So the trick is to live. The trick is
to learn. To find the muses, the
gumption, the wherewithal; to find
the motivation and the discipline (the
discipline that I have perfected). Some
where there are even a few kernels of
wisdom. And my intention was to
make a short little note in my head,
pocket it into memory as a reminder,
forgotten until the next time it
comes up (probably sometime
later this week, or next), of
exactly what wisdom
is and does; the is
having been felt
in such a giddy
and odd set of
moments of late;
of late, and what
was I saying but
motivate, nose to the
grindstone, keep doing
the needful, get ’er done,
keep finding ways to say
the same thing, while
doing it, of course. To
find that new you, mean
ing not just me, but also
all of those who might act
as mirrors and regulators
and add that spark that
keeps death from coming
between me and this fine
goal I thought I already
achieved, and probably
more than once, only
to go through the hum
ility of realizing its
failure. Is that
who I am? I
might could be
okay with that.
Item. Check.