Discipline, Perseverance and Other Voices of Insomnia

I never had much respect
for middle of the road,
it was always the extremes
that captured my attention,
the ones out on the edge,
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 eventually
put it back on the shelf,
the words seemed to fit but somehow
it just 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 a bunch of words together
whenever the bills were due,
claiming to have some secret vault
full of previously unpublished material,
then again I could imagine him
speaking from his death bed,
giving her specific instructions:

“feed it to em slow baby,
give em a book a year,
that’s 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 all these words down,
the 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.

You were the greatest Hank
.
.