Don’t want to know, but wish to somehow, wish to know more, do want to wish and see and seek, do and don’t and wish and want and can’t help it, because something might happen, something might, as soon as you don’t expect it that shred of goodness or decency or uniqueness or beauty, daresay, might expand and fan out into some new other bigger different familiar wished-for level, no reward for looking but worth the too-often too-apparent risk of knowing,

so ever digging, I’ll study it through and through and upside out archaeological with no plan, though, no site map excavation structure of little strings strung from wooden stakes to mark it all out thin white line by thin white line

because deep down I know it’s all for finding how deep down mysteries run, flood water and life channels for wild rides toward wishes I deep down know might very well like so many end in some estuarial disappointment, delineated, catalogued, but I nevertheless keep study digging what’s behind closed doors with quiet cat paw nudging

like magic might be, just might be and that might be might be enough to keep pushing me away from disillusion, pushing toward possessed and never done, never just done up or over, possessed and possessing with finished out front walking several steps ahead, ideal form truly something to behold and everything to endlessly pursue, always at least a few alluringly traceable steps ahead and then there’s nothing but everything to feel and touch and taste and see and such is the human condition with the easeled image before the window open,

forever here and there, listening for what feels like might be forever, listening through over and over and over repeat so many overs, over and over to think it’ll be anything but,

but they say most things are, will be, that is, if they aren’t already before they begin; I say “they say” so it’s not just me who seems saying

because it can’t just be me who believes it’ll always all bottom out, all found or at least over and out enough to be just-struck matchlight bright enough in an otherwise dark room standing and the wood-creak ceasing when short steps did, caught up to possessed and standing amid match-flame suggested paisley-papered walls and on the floor strewn hat boxes, lidded and open and it feels like naivety told me maybe one or two or—who knows—all would have clouds inside this time, clouds and calaveras, light as air heavy dreams of rebirth and metamorphosis just maybe, it’s not impossible, they say, and in my head are mixed up wants and needs and what’s left are only traces empty dark room boxed and tunes tamed, nuances known, alliteration applied way down and mundane me is the sense it somehow seems,

just plain old otherwise and I wrap up in a two-tone quilt of self-doubt and contradiction, nevertheless chilled by dissatisfaction or whatever they say it is.

And all I can think to say is I knew knowing would rain all over my dream-parade and I’d stand there still with the same old song singing and the tiny flame fading from its post-phosphorics and going out snuffed altogether and all I smell are traces of smoke and a staleness that might as well be the loudest sound I ever heard of hearts and hopes breaking like white-capped green sea waves crashing on the rocky shores of too many poems and how’s that saline and seaweed image for disproportionately beautiful ominousness and a little open-sea rambling

and desperate slap in the face,

thinking Marcel must’ve been right about desire and possession, about the flourish and wither,[1]  seeing it as an infinite regression to the withered fact that “more” is just a thing “they say”—

except. Always except, that’s the dig, the search, the thing, looking for except and I still must, because except is where the mystery must, and I marvel a little at how the same letters make expect.

So spirit tell me, tell me over and over the things you’ve told, tell me till we’re old, tell me those optimisticisms, the hopefulnesses, the worthwhile longings, the ones so long buried away in my own aways and covered up a little extra by what they say pays, rubble and glitter and shiny dumb stuff piled up and all around and the right stuff layered on wrongs, emptiness in a three-piece suit like the suit changes the insides, but there

and there, here and there I listen whole by whole, layer by layer, piece by piece till the pieces speak themselves and the rest rests till it can no longer quite be heard and held as a safe-seeming cover but instead as one great big mysterious known mystery one and the forest is all trees and the sense remains, the feeling draws well out and drowns and I maintain, 

and maintain I know it naively like rebirth, like seven lifetimes in one, forever curious and knowing now I know a never over, a ceiling-less, wall-less, unboxed view onto a view of more and the clouds float free through the trees and the light streams in and the air breathes through and I can finally think otherwise and trust in the wonders of satisfaction, obsessively sated, over and over satisfied and endlessly hungry for more, certain that knowing more actually on certain rare handful lifetime occasions means something and that something is possibility,

knowing Theo said to write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric, and knowing no, it’s necessary, not barbaric, spirit says,

spirit says possession and desire make all things flourish, desire and possession like the snake forever eating its own tail and being reborn and there’s my portal, my opening onto more, the exception to terror and banality alike

and I come to be still at last, searching still, forever searching still in a sweet moon pool silence guided back home to the certitude of endless possibilities by the seven lights of the Pleiades, possibilities for forever following, still, 

still wanting to know it all, still wishing for the mysterious satisfactions of everything desire brings, whatever comes, whatever rains, sticking close to finished, always in hot pursuit and urged on, forever urged on by exception and the exceptional knowledge that “having everything” really can really mean it’s really never over, never done.

 

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[1] “desire makes all things flourish, possession withers them”—if you wanted to know.