Impossible [2010]

for my mother

"Did I try everything, ferret in every hold,

secretly, silently, patiently, listening?"

-- Samuel Beckett

It is impossible to crawl into the right corner without the guidance of a homing beacon, or to get close enough to the floor, through the carpet, to breathe the dust and hair and feces beneath the boards.  (This is the brain blinking, and it is in Richmond, and it is in Chicago, and it is in Port Huron.)  This is the ideal way to contribute to a process that cannot occur, simply because there is another crawler directly below the ceiling, also typing, and he too is seeking something other than his self to sate the alone song.  This spans years of populated measures and extended rests.  And after thousands upon thousands of obligato statements, given apprehensively, he is begging me to be asleep, as my eyes ache, and my feet conduct the contradictory and strangely competitive heat.  

Growing more numb by the hour, I am hanging out without socks and shoes, fitting myself into the stiffening joints of minutes, and locking my language like the door to the outside.  (Blinking like a blue baker's dozen, this brain is incongruous, and it is insatiable, and it is intrepid.)  This door is dripping with condensation, which is pooling beneath where the wife and others are waiting, with his wife, and alternate refugees.  And they are home, and they have brought animals on leashes, and in cages, and these cages have clearly been constructed to hold much larger animals.  Where are these animals?  How did they escape?  Or, were they ever even born into this cycle of creativity and lazy stealing, which is problematic to tap into now, given that we are finding kinks in all of our systems.  (A blink is home, and a blink is a brain away.)  We are now operating at the fullest extension of the human mind, which is also impossible.