Have I Lost My Touch?
Unless I truly believed in the fiction
of television, or have forgotten the
truth we knew as children about
anything we regarded as ancient,
this is one of the stupidest questions
ever. Of course I have, and resound
ingly! It’s gone, it’s gone, it’s gone!
Back then, when I asked that question,
how naive I was. Speaking of ancient,
it’s as if all of my life I had been aging
in reverse. Or if there was a kernel of
wisdom ever earned, it was the invasive
species that would inevitably obliterate
this existence, the seed at the bottom
of that question mark that, now that I
see it so clearly, has grown into a vine
hell-bent with dementia. I’ve moment
arily come around to find I have curled
maturely into a vine, into a position I’d call faetal, if I could even remember
the word. The ancient human shrinks
into a child. Shrinking still, it crawls
itself into oblivion before it remembers
to forge for itself a legacy, or even a
mausoleum. Scooting its hands and
knees upon the earth as it disappears
upon a horizon no longer his, was it
once a sensual being? “Oh, heavens!”
replies Lucinda. “When we last saw him,
he was mumbling indecipherably.” “It’s
true!” “I heard him, too!” They had no
idea it was an attempt to articulate
The Answer to a Long-Forgotten Question.
