We don't get to time
our crises of faith,
do we? When the
bite has gone out
of the bourbon it
seems as though
jokes are not funny,
as they used to be.

Why me? Why must I
consider the round holes
before me with only
the squarest of pegs?
I believe. And don't say
that I chose my convictions.
The light was turned on,
and I couldn't not see.
It was simply a matter
of blindness for me.

No reprieve, though,
no solace, no balm
of the spirit can wrest
in what came out or
replace what is gone,
or dispel the contagion
from eons ago.
It's inherited, man.
It's tradition, and
part of your cosmos;
and the irony is that
it makes perfect sense:

It's non-contradiction,
this counter-fulfillment
(hat-tip to Milosz,
the avuncular muse);
it's unborn, not
unbearable, yet
undistinguished:
it's angst, y'all --
this isn't the end
of the world.

Perhaps it could be,
and my vantage would
yield speculation about
where the corn-maze
might lead. And what then?
What would Nada Surf say?
"I know the last page
so well, I can't read the
first. So I just don't start.
It's getting worse."

If stopping is starting
and planting is picking,
if writing is reading and
labor is play, then
the start is the finish,
the finish the start,
and we've all been wrong,
and this wasn't the point.

For fairness has nothing
to do with these queries
the Underground Adam
can never not ask --
denatured, unnatural
but native in all of
our souls, and in love
with his meaningless tasks:
tasks without masters
that altruists ply,
bereft of a father.
And then you die.

And shall we be heard
on account of our
numerous words,
voluminous
manscripts, numberless
pages, our lyrics,
our poems, our
cellular phones,
our paeans and epics,
our syntax and diction?
Our blogs?
If so, then what say we?
Will habeas corpus
be so very dear when
we speechlessly stand
dumbfoundedly plumbing
our own perfidy?
The best of all
possible outcomes
to all of this still
are not likely;
they're nothing but
hypotheses.