Annihilation

{"The only way to atone for the sin of writing is to annihilate what is written.  

Destruction leaves that which is essential intact." – 

Georges Bataille, L'Abbe C}

[1]

There was once a little boy...

But that comes a little later.  

Of first importance is the referent.  

Will the sign be understood?

The girl looks out the window, past the laundry truck, 

Up the street, past a man holding an indistinguishable 

Object sitting under a dim kerosene streetlamp; 

He is unaware

Of her eyes, and she turns 

Her head away, almost not noticing a rustling curtain 

Behind which sits a confused little boy named Stephen 

Who is reading the last page 

Of a paper

He had to write for school.

Do not read any more:  stop now, or:

Tristram is tottering on the brink of being:  

He may yet cross over into old age.

But not now.  

[Moore's ontological lapsometer, (un)like its utopian forebear, 

Cried the end of this (post)world:  

It's love, love, love...although entropy 

Displaced that simply notion a long time ago.]

Dogwoods, magnolias, southern belles 

All eradicate the discourse, disclaim the epistemological, 

And beg Quentin to come home.  

There's no one there.

The mansions, the upper houses of our existence are empty – 

Will you be a doer,

Or will you mostly just be?  

Wake up, children.

Bugs are in revolt against electricity, 

Sloth has won out over entropy, 

Love is dead

And there is, located between Mississippi and Ohio, 

A great span of desert.  

This is no place for Pooh, 

And Peter Pan, oh, where, oh where, 

Oh where are you?

It is no less than God's own dog 

We are looking for, no less than the 

Supreme-on-high roll-over-and-play-dead command.  

You tell.  

No, you.

And the grass under our feet?  

Trample it.  Drink it.  

Years like watersheds, empty.

Our Hero (who has no lover):  gnomish, 

Gnarled, often short.  And old.  

Older than essence itself, 

Beyond existence.  

No doer, he; no being, either.  

A mere anagram of his mirrored creations, 

The one the only ladies and gentlemen 

Presenting the greatest (non)living sideshow 

Never to grace the stage until now that is, 

Presented to you direct from the laundry truck 

That killed him – 

Hero! 

(Bow, Hero -- isn't he ugly?)

His physicality does not matter, 

It is of no importance to him.  

This is a key to the overall wake-up call:  

Nothing of the physical can interfere.

We praise Hero, and through us he lives.  

It is our house that he makes his home in,

It is our territory that he eats, 

It is by our markers that he moves.  

The power of a voice, our language and the cymbal 

Of our music, for he is a fragment of us (p)remembered.

His power is the staff we cannot hold, 

His voice the rod of our (self)hatred, and together

They do comfort us.

Not like Stephen, our flower, thorn-less the rose, 

Martyred (self-immolation, Icarus-style?

No, simply) for what reason?  

Indeterminate, but present.  

Stephen - Lover of our Hero, (he who is, 

And he whom we said had no lover) – 

Is dead, and whowhatwhenwherehow killed him.  

The rose is missing one blue shoe that has washed 

Somewhere ashore inside a girl who wears an orange 

Bathing suit.  

Too much, we ask?  

Believe it, children.

Let us recant:  it is impossible.

Let us revert:  it is done.

Let us, all together now, sing:  an-a one, an-a two...

Ere we go, the mama's calling:  my child, child, 

You are a light, a light unto your selves

And you are the guide that marks your place.

Has it yet achieved chimericality?  

No, but positively recircular, or at least, he grass is.  

In the distance, the faint rattle of native snares, 

And we are the lesser men,

We are the empty men,

Children of refuge, gutters and broken egg shells (is us).

Here the bird, hear, in Hero's mouth, 

Unclaiming the trampled, drank glass, 

Shadows of where we've been, of what is going, 

Not where we're gone.

Synopsis:  little if nothing.

Plot:  fateful like a doom.

Blue shoe?  Red herring, 

It will show up again.

This then is the voice we hear:  

For Sale.  

Says, you and me?  

We're alike, we are all analogies 

To one another - will you?  No.

"I'll find someone," she tells Hero 

Who only shrugs.

You tell.  

No, you.  

Red rover, red rover, send Hero right over.

Prognosis:  imminent.

Nocturnal veils that are peeled away 

Are the people we love, and these people 

Are wisps of fragmentary memories.  

That escape.

Children?  Are you listening?

What about Tristram's oncoming old age informs him?  

Is it that perennial child that dwells within him?  

Too simple, too simple so something other than.  

Look at the elements, only to see that the elements 

Do not add it up – 

why can't I get just one kiss, why can't I get...

waited my whole life for...

They may only exist.  

This existence called into question, but not the essence.

No, attend, children who are our wasted hours, 

The essence is present by the mere mentioning.  

Thus do we almost be.

Ask and you shall...but is that too simple?  

[2]

Begin yet (end) again:  

Once upon a time there was a boy who was a little confused.

His name was Stephen.  Stephen, blooming, 

Did not know who he wanted to be, 

He married an anagram, 

Met a girl in an orange bathing suit, 

Gave her his favorite blue (swayed) shoes,

Which she promptly ate (and which eventually 

(If there is such a thing as eventuals) 

made her crawl across a desert to a dry river) 

And he had many great adventures.

But he never really lived.

So he died, and mainly because, 

But of course, children, it is all of us – 

You, indifferent, 

You, unconcerned, 

You, curious, 

You, illiterate - who are to blame.  

Drinking the glass, eating the lawn, 

Causing certain (said) disclamations, 

Affected, let the guilt rest

In equal proportion on our collective head.

Can we atone?  Annihilate.

Can we annihilate?  Heal thyself.

Can we heal our selves?

Children, you all, my loves, 

It is like this:  

Our old man, our Tristram, is see-sawing on the brink

Of being:  

Moore is crying the end of the (post)world:  

It's love, love, love,

And that has always already 

ever been destroyed.

Loves, you all, my children:  

Can we heal our selves?

It is too much too ask.

© 2012 – Mark A. Douglas – All Rights Reserved