"Choosing not to fail is a strange deception. How can it be done? Is it best to stagger wild into a blinding night and thrash at the fear that binds? Or to shelter down against the possible fall and wait for better signs?
I'll not be dulled by intuition of failure. I'll not let the storm that threatens a new horizon with maybe not or maybe to shunt me from my path. But still I am hesitant. Still, I hesitate. Fucking life that stands behind me, whispering to my future, “No.”
Let me sleep on it. I'll give you an answer in the morning."
-Captain Kangaroo, addressing the National Acrobats and Monkey Boxers, LA chapter in November of 1973. The Captain was later found to have been drunk on Listerine and Creme de Menthe after a falling out with his long term partner, Fred McFeely Rogers. He proceed to fire BBs into the crowd before stripping to the waist and diving out of a window. It was the last time he was ever seen in public. Three years later a postcard with no return address in Cpt. 'Roo's hand was received by then President, Gerald "Big Guns" Ford. It was covered in indecipherable occult scrawlings, and one legible line-
"Dear Mary, I yearn for you tragically. A. T. Tappman, Chaplain, U.S. Army"
Tuesday, August 14, 2012
At the Crossroads We Stood Still
In the temples, and after the temples
at Crossroads and other ways of
passage,
as men and also as souls of
nothing,
we are riding towards the dawn of
nightfall.
Carried up on false celebrations
, our failing lives,
the loves we've wrecked in
conquering,
the deals we've washed our hands
of,
we are moving into an empty death
like a house where no one lives
***
there is a chance (perhaps in a
whisper
) that will carry out the promise of
the
last dream before this one
and I've watched it run past me
just then
}water in a frozen mile
without redemption{
[This hand ,here, at the end
of me
(by death and by geography)
makes vain attempts towards
you
, by hacking at keys
that do not open doors, or
hold no meaning,
will never be read
by the person for whom they
were made]
Watching all my language collapse
between where it begins and where
it leaves me
I stutter across the page
faintly wishing for more, and
remembering-
At the crossroads we stood still
waiting for the road to choose us.
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