Discipline, Perseverance and Other Voices of Insomnia

I never had much respect for

middle of the road, it was always

the extremes, the ones out on the edge,

who captured my attention,

pushing it right to the limit,

leaving it all on the field, nothing

held back;

this is what I admired;

most of the good ones slipped away,

like killers in the night, discipline

never a strong point, perseverance

not a possibility;

I browsed through one of his ‘posthumous’

books the other day, I almost

bought it, but then put it back

on the shelf, the words seemed to fit,

but somehow it didn’t feel right,

it felt a little too ‘perfect’, a bit too

‘contrived’;

more than coincidence?

I imagined his widow. sitting

down at a table, throwing words together

whenever the bills were due,

claiming to have some secret vault,

full of previously unpublished material,

then again I could imagine him,

talking to her on his death bed,

giving her specific instructions:

“feed it to em slow baby,

give em a book a year,

this is all there is, but it should

be enough, if you spread it out.”

either way, I put it back on the shelf,

I didn’t want to be guilty of

supporting fraud, I’m much too

‘clean’ for that;

much too ‘dignified’;

later, I will go home, write down

 these words, thoughts and ideas

springing up from that short

book store glance,

wishing I had bought the book,

knowing the words really belong to him,

wondering how he knew he’d be

inside my head 16 years later,

while sitting at a kitchen table

at 4:12 in the morning.

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