The Waiting Room

Colorful wallpaper borders cannot brighten the waiting room.
Sterile and impersonal, hospitals are inhospitable…inhuman.
Volunteers dictate directions over and over
About cell phones, smoking areas, and free coffee.

Sitting stoically alone, or in familial enclaves
Tired faces gaze blindly at a television,
Newspapers, or each other…all waiting…waiting.
The atmosphere is wearying.

They wait. Wondering when word will come.
When a Doctor, spoken to maybe once or twice,
Will be ushered before them, surgical mask pulled below the chin,
Stethoscope around the neck, obligatory white coat…

Waiting for the pronouncement, a benediction, relief.
Waiting to hear that “everything went very well.”

—

METAPHYSICS

What is it to be Rational?

To be Logical? To be Reasonable?

To be Human?

Rationality is an illusion, a sophist straitjacket

Logic is a myth, a fable, a fairy tale.

And Reason, Pure Reason!

Critique until convinced we can know anything.

Maybe Socrates knew. That is why he drank Hemlock.

The Truth?

We are Desire.

Pure Appetite.

Let us critique that!

Know it. Accept it.

All else is metaphysical masturbation.

1/4/2007

—-

Way of the Rodent?

Driving I see two muskrats in the road

One sniffing and nudging the other.

One will obviously never move again.

Mother, Father, Lover, Daughter?

It doesn’t much matter I suppose.

Driving by he or she scurries away.

In the mirror I see the muskrat return,

Once again nudging, staring, puzzled.

I briefly think about Muskrat Theology.

It’s not so funny I realize.

Concerning death do I know any

more than a muskrat?

—