Had an idea. I’d play on what “better” means. Mix it up with the categorical imperative of the should, a played-out life theme of troubling externality, but tied to illness—of mind, of heart, the usual. Weary of weariness, that sort of illness, I thought, anxious my abstractions would never get me out of the gate, recalling Pound and characteristically reading too much into things like when someone says too little or too much.

Is anyone worried I’ll succumb again? I am, sometimes, but I have confident things to say this time. Responses, I’d call them. And recovery, but unclinically. The benefits of solitude, together with you. It’s not thoughts that are dangerous, but thought patterns. The dream is more than process. I’ll still love you when you’re fat on Monday. Taken out of context, these things make sense.

“The unforeseen, improvised and fatal, fascinates me.” That was the Muse, again, making so much sense that there’s little left for us to… carve. What about another category of word, one that doesn’t seem to follow “making” so intuitively, so simplistically—that’d be poetry. This was supposed to be poetry. A centered column of left-right justified text of maybe eight words per line. If I knew more about language and the written word I’d know whether there was a proper name for that or not.

Time to get _____. Takes _____ to get better. Take all the _____ you need. Get _____. Do what _____ need. Take _____.

Time doesn’t come back around again like my poems do but seasons seem to make me think it does, and that’s more than just more language. This winter is unforeseen; it won’t be like the last, no matter how many words I throw—or don’t throw—at it. Thoughts, merely, and I look to the Muse, even though she was there then too, and ventriloquize alternative patterns so I’m not the only one speaking.

Not everything means something, says something. Not every moment is to be learned from, only learned, presumably with better grammar. I do the dishes with a whole new gnomic outlook. Whose word count am I exceeding and whose stylistic and formal sensibilities am I offending. Ezra, I hope, and all his acolytes. The more the merrier. Mencken said that in a letter to Dreiser in the past but he didn’t mean it the way I do now. I put the silverware to dry handle up. I mean I realized that the dream is process, held together by trust, the way one time in September—in a September—she said be better and go, trusting I’ll take what I need.

Originally published on Hijacked Amygdala here.