ON HUMAN ACHIEVEMENT

Man stands

Purpose without Meaning
or Meaning without Aim

before The Clock: "Proportionally

there is less matter in outer space
than in an empty room"

pregnant with Time
who is constant-
ly giving birth to

decades, years, hours
of Revolution, days of Despair,

seconds of Happiness, and using Pure Logic
(one which doesn't have dirt
on its chest, like some beast) Man tries

to take The Clock apart: searching
for those wayward aeons, ages passing, fleeting

moments (lost in themselves, but
still) trying to find out: All

(where The Hell years come from
--maybe to find out
where In Heaven's Name they're going

--things always taking a contrary way)

all seems to be approaching us
while yet reproaching us) out of The Clock

that stares him in the face (searching) says Man:

I saw the best minds of my whatever generation
destroyed by madness, starving, hysterical, myst-
ical, naked--or maybe it was just a row of winos

told to move on, who have "Presently"

reduced The Clock into) This
Mess of moments inanimate

you can obviously SEE here (at this time)
gathering dust (as if to mix it up
by our tears to a mud) --And yet decadence,

desperations, yearnings, momentary salvation &
eternal hopes, the years, days, hours & ALL
keeps coming on! apparently (crystal-clear): Not
coming from The World at all which is The Clock
but from The Clock that's Th'World!"

I'm tellin' you: This violates every last sacred
covenant The Ultimate Politico drew upon Th'
Sand with his ...

"Dick! Oh, I'm sorry: Stetson!
Say, weren't you th'guy who was

gett'n off behind that all-
ey yesternight?" off the bus

"Proportionally" ... came the late
Mister Lister... "Ahhh, did he die?" ... Not yet;

walking along the corner with his
umbrella (Josh Magosh's for when you're

pounded by tempests of imponderables),

under his arm the infamous book
of Comrade Feodor Mayamivitch (that sunshine communist
who advocates outlawing lips)

from the home of Marge d'Mystic
(decipheress of Fate's careless scribblings),
Proportionally            

  ... so much is Nothing
that anything that tries but to prove itself

to be no less than just merely what it is
--always falls short even of that!

to Sir Cecil--the first man ever born
in a tweed suit--Gonnebuggie's
to congratulate him on receiving the Nobel

for his merely trying to discover a cure
for Th'Need to Join (that most destructive of all
human maladies: one Whopper extra onion every day

sans fail) a chap so fat he can start an earthquake
just by skipping lunch, being interviewed by
one Hoken McLoken from Hoboken (a trader
in Conscience by scoops), far more interested in

what he had to say about that very conservative
grease monkey to the universe: Pope Irwin III

(who was so fond of saying "Nuns! ...can't live with'em/
can't live without'em!") O, Mr. Bimple

caught in his self-painted cocoon, frescoing
his soul in drifting across the bombed-out walls

of the World in ruins, but peopled with wholesome
ghosts ... "What are those?" Shit-flavored
Doritos--Don't worry, it's not real shit.

"That's NOT the point!" (infinite
strangers) & so (screwdriver in hand) Man

undertakes to dig The World --Lawd O little Man
knows that just because he thinks

(years, days, hours & all
come from the World) it never has to be so,

since whom the gods would run over with a
bicycle --no flat tire spares

Proportionally ... (Who is The Source
of the World? years? days? &) all! Who only
is The Source? proportionally:

there's much more intelligence
in a cockroach's brain than in
The Whole Universe" & yet

if he as much as suspected it,
if ever he got to know the full extent
of his O                     

    he'd quickly turn on himself

perhaps (no doubt as well) believing
that only with his own utter extinction

(with stopping The Ongoing Flood)
will Dissolution cease drowning him

--I'm sure he'd reason it thus:
and, "Why, it's SO, but SO ordinary an
Answer! that it's extraordinary!"

(that before himself

Man
stands!)