THE DECLINE OF
INVENTIONS
By Quentin Smith
My neighbor asked for the meaning of
my life,
But I apologized for keeping it in the
future,
Where it remains conveniently out of
reach.
Instead, I gave her a bowl of
artificially flavored
Flamingo soup, as I called it before
Her eyes went blue with surprise.
Tonight I cannot sleep, distracted
By an insouciant trinket,
And an artificially amplified worry,
About the day’s actions
I chose not to take. Was I right?
I finally fall asleep, seraphically
Comforted by the thought that
At least it is possible.
I heard one of my second string
offspring,
Boasting in his sleep of his
granddad’s
Kangaroo-hide muset bag.
I wish I could muse as deeply as that.
When I take my pretentious
Meaninglessness to such rococo
lengths,
I cannot even deceive myself by
The arabesque layers veiling
What is, at bottom, clichés of
Wittgensteinian nonsense.
So, that leaves me where?
I should stop thinking for myself.
Tomorrow night I shall recline in a
Sartrian
Ambience, hypothesizing that
I had an eerie twilight childhood
And that I invent what is right.
Instead of mining darkly gnomic
Conundrums of my invention
I will indolently refuse to invent,
And pretend to enjoy the ennui
Of the newly enlightened.
I will flick good and evil from my
fingers
And free myself from freedom.
Those were interesting thoughts,
Glyptic and almost worthy of a new
Panolopy of graffiti.
Give it up.
I can think whatever I want,
But what does it matter?
I am an organism and do whatever I
must.
Now the “must” is to slake
A real, mammalian urge,
The purpose embodied in 40
Hertz-firings,
A temporary monopoly of ions
Circuiting my old limbic system.
My kidneys say it all, at least for
the moment,
And I ride them for all they are
worth.
I feel a clarion mission, bestowed
Upon me from the physically immanent.
I yaw like a sow’s production,
Bursting pink, natal walls.
For several seconds, I am an
Ecstatic metaphysical certainty
Supervening on a full bladder call.
Written June 16, 2003