Self Portrait # 62 J. T. BLEU

Dabbling in sincere poetry—he learns a tough lesson—some things must die, and violently. It is then that he discards the bird’s guts and begins to write essays. And he starts a novel from time to time, the misty figure outside the window always an amanuensis, always a mimetic charmer—the secret sharer.

Time has changed. It is ungraspable. Once upon a time it was golden and hard.

Questions are in the air and will remain there…he swallows the acid reflux.

A black stocking cap on his oily hair, he is thinking about how he must wash it daily, a thought that began when he was sixteen and never ended. Is that eternity? Shit…

People always ask him: “Is it raining out?” Or, “are you sick?” His unwashed hair a great burden to his vanity.

Stupid questions give way to sublimity…and he prefers not to talk about it. Who is he kidding anyway? Not the future. And history nails down what it will.   

Confession: The result of his living 23 and 1/3 years inside a halo left various imprints not healthy. And he lost his verticality.  

Clichés about happiness, odes to obedience, and not-so-subtle putdowns by sycophants who saw themselves as shepherds of his soul, haunt his nightmares, but not in a scary way, just tediously like tyrants in their predictability. He paints the impression into dreams with cobalt colors, but something is definitely missing.

Energy is the new matter that must be explored by him. Can it be lost and found?

Newton or Einstein? Shakespeare or Jeremiah? Dying or living? Beginning or end?

Mundane Philistines, he thinks; then he watches the Whale and the Squid, and laughs. This is followed by reading PIMP The Story of My Life by Iceberg Slim.

Dave Chappelle recommended it. So he read it. Wait—he is still reading it. See, over there on the couch. 

He will recommend it one day, too.

It would make a good poem, especially the part about the bird's guts, you see, the Romans believed in augury...and sometimes they ate the lark's tongue.