mmmmmcxci

Clunking Onward

     Call me with your danger
              —Kathleen Fraser

Are you ready to move this in a new

direction?  I am.  More absurdity, less 

anxiety, and no boredom.  So what scares 

me?  Fear of death.  Fear of being alone.  

An extrovert who has been ravaged by 

a decade-long case of agoraphobia.  

The fear of ending in tragedy.  

Realizing that, oh hell, if I were to 

bite the dust, to shuffle off this 

mortal coil as I slept or (scarier still) 

just as I began to go through the con

flicting process of waking up; if the spasms

began to erupt, those ripples that lure who

ever I am in dream-state, giddily and dizzily,

back toward a simpler awareness, to an 

awakened state, if this time nothing 

manages to entice me, so that instead

I lie here with my eyes closed until I have

gone cold.  Who’d find what was left?  It’d 

be nobody I know, that much is certain.

After how many days and nights?  Am I
cognizant of how disturbing—how scary—
that what I leave behind, having accrued a
few things since less than a decade ago losing

all that up to that point I had, the ephemera, 

only to replace the lot with these few pieces of 

furniture and a dozen or so reams that, individually

and in summation, are but a heap—garbage—like 

the inevitable carcass that was once me would be, at 

least to whomever would arrive to take it all away, 

to  dispense with me and my detritus.  Who would

understand what each of these relics had meant 

to me?  Who’ll consider the bias I had for each 

piece of this mess?  No one.  It’ll be someone who

arrives and makes a dispassionate, democratic
list, more than likely (surely there’s nothing here

of any significant cash value).... //  Yuck.  Damn.

Rather than find my way toward fresh perspective, 

I’ve trailed off rather morbidly, haven’t I?  At the
outset, I thought I’d work my way humorously

through the horrors of my greatest fears.  But
how bland I’ve been lately.  Perhaps I’ll put
this down, switch on the television, like I did
around this time yesterday to watch the Emmys

(in which newcomers and personal faves Pluribus
and Widow’s Bay all but swept).  How might I
diminish my fears with laughter or pleasant
thoughts?  To relax the tension between aspiration

and reality, to redesign goals so that, should I tap
into an as-yet-unfound pocket of energy, I can
meet them and move forward, ever forward,
while this life yet remains spirited.  Here I am!