The fork's rusted tines pick at
microwaved potatoes and
store-bought thyme.
You get fatter
bloated

like a leech,
impossibly far removed
from the centre of things, their beating
heart. Shouldn't a knowledge of Bach and Mahler
of Gabriel José de la Concordia García Márquez
of the short-run relationship between the
nominal exchange rate
interest rate
& output have led to a less

disappointing existence.

Eye long 4 the awtumm of niw Anfänge
Eye shud have known, been
Eine andere? Butt Hau?
Hau,
im Deed.

One must go back in time,
stem the leakage. Would seeking less
attention
have in fact
or should I have known more about
No, no, that has never been the problem, the REAL probleme

It is how I come across.

Too late.
For regret, for any
All I seek: a full accounting.
Oh, and butter, lots of butter.

Ideas don't come to you, ideas memories people places entire universes are taken away snatched away, forever just like that that's it like *poof* gone, and writing only begins when you try to fight back. Writing only consists, insofar as it is worth anything, in fighting back.

All you can hang on to is the truth of your experience, and how it is that you remember having lived through it. All "creativity" consists in is the faithful, honest reproduction of that which once was and will never again be, in spite of everything, in spite of every temptationcompulsion to falsify, in spite of every assault of Time on memory, in the teeth of shame, in the teeth of propaganda.

Creativity lies not in the act of creation but in conservation, preservation, in safeguarding and embalming, in the construction of trapdoors under which to stash away the letters, in the bottling and tinning and canning and salting and pickling and freeze-drying, and in continuation, no matter what.
Remember that.

Always. Remember that.

There is a piece of driftwood on my table,
painted black.
And a stopped watch
that marks time from three and a half years ago.

Yes, these are the materials
with which I shall build my new house:
whimsy, and nostalgia.

God is a frog.
God is the still Frog sat
on the lily pad.

God is Me
staring at the Frog,
unblinking.

But God is not
Silence.

God is the Frog that jumps
from the lily pad into the water.
God is not Joy, because God is not Anxiety.

God's tongue darts out,
catches a fly,
God is nourished and the fly has to die
for God. God is the Desire
to jump into the water from atop the lily pad
to jump in
Flop!

God is not frogspawn
God is not a tadpole
but God most certainly
is an amphibian.

Enough about God.

You have these earthen pots.
Diyas, they're called.
Some you fill with paraffin, some with vegetable oil.
Notice how often it is not the texture of the wick but the
care with which
you light them, stave off with cupped hands
an idle breeze, whisper to them
that keeps them brightly burning?

But it's always a pity.
Such a pity, such a pity that you look back
and sigh
when a magnificent glowing flame is
made superfluous by a
flipped switch...

Our days are shadowy, vacant spaces illumined from time to time by a set of recognisable false dawns. Yet we persist. Yet we persist, if only to- perhaps some day- reach that peak from which to best survey the ruins, and embrace with fatherly pride the sheer perfection of our wretchedness.

Travelling with an old friend.
Auld Lang Syne, and all that.
You like it even when the
hairpin bends
Of mountain roads make you nauseous, even as
you wait for connectivity and get
mugged
by yesterday's emails. A dazzling sunset often
makes up, or a boat ride through a mangrove forest.
Mild annoyance is the only language the gods speak, didn't you know? Did you not?

Later, when your sore back is
Horizontal on a hotel bed
and the lights have to be turned off.
Damned, but alive.
Only then, on the margins of Consciousness
You wake up
To lurid Dreams of
absolution. Of joy, even.

Something must give. Something!