What is left.
What is left.
By: Mark Sargent
ON GENEROSITY (for H. Marshall Peter)
NOT WHAT GIVEN NOT WHAT GIVEN NOW WHAT GIVEN NOT
is what came out of earth when we squeezed it like a pimple a tourniqueted
banana or burn point it bled like cotton like Joe Biltz before poverty but bent
to the pretzel point, Hawaii say, someplace where the needy are whisked away
to spend their limited time tormented by our generosity fucking hounded by
it to the point of apoplexy reeling with pin pricks of good fortune in a hard
bare bones Beckettian landscape: a cow, a dumpster, a dog in goggles, two
Samaritans approach absolutely glowing with compassion, suffused with the
memory of the rush good works bring and feed the indigent a cocktail of chill
pills, suppository, of course, and when their anuses are chock-a-block stuffed
with pharmaceutical good cheer they vomit, confident that their peristaltic
contraction won’t hinder the joy absorption and the drift to the faraway.
WARREN BUFFET GREASES THE CABBIE WITH A JACKSON THE
man who just won 200 large with a seven/deuce hits him with a Franklin the
four anarchists invite him to a party the guy carrying a cash register says get
us the fuck outta town and I’ll split it with ya. And now they’re partners.
NOTHING GIVEN IS ENTIRE UNTO ITSELF NO GIFT HOVERS IN
air but is tethered to great sheets of billowing Dacron full of the prevailing
mood-habit-wind-placebo-excuse-rumor-desire-burn to feel better to get on
top of that empathy lump and ride it all the way down to a godlike granting of
boon amongst those crowded on the dock waiting for that mythic ship to come
in.
WHAT YOU DON’T USE IS LEFTOVER. HANDING THAT OUT IS
merely not throwing away we’d throw all the uneaten pizza in a box and put
it out on the dumpster, gone in minutes almost warm Canadian Bacon and
Pineapple, Pepperoni & Prayer, and anchovies anchovies anchovies stuck in a
mysterious cheesy mass aching with mushrooms, hormones, and cheap first
date angst.
WHAT YOU HAVE LEFT IS THE ONLY BAROMETER WORTH
A shit. So the halo’s hard to hoist lest you’re willing to do without without
without what? Your own personal library? Argh. For that matter, I don’t
want to do without an olive orchard and a view. Material things these, for
giving away love does not diminish. Even if you could give away friends, who
would want them? The generation of friendship is a unique energy in each
case, you don’t own it and it ain’t for sale. So when I buy five hundred bucks
worth of ducks that don’t quack it’s a slap on the back to one who does the
work and has asked while the abused push against the walls of the compound.
Cracks appear, chunks of plaster fall, someone has broken all the glass
imbedded in the top of the wall. We wait for the time when those who have
received decide it’s time to take and generosity be damned.
For me the nuggets come at the end of each section: “won’t hinder the joy absorption and the drift to the faraway;” “And now they’re partners;” “waiting for that mythic ship to come in;” “cheap first date angst;” “We wait for the time when those who have received decide it’s time to take and generosity be damned.”