metacognition

tonight, the moon is full of closeted ideas and repressions of thought
of memories, too difficult to communicate
still, it radiates, it glows
over everything
leaking mystery everywhere
showering the world in a threadbare
hardly visible
but still recognizable
spray or mist of inspirational fluff:
the hack-artist's most treasured dream-vision
the lifeblood of the high-art mongoloid

he situates and/or positions himself in front of
a typewriter
he imagines a monitor screen where an open window, a drawn curtain,
contaminates his head
with stock imagery
recycled debris and ash from
far greater poets
far greater writers
still, he persists.

he lets his hands float above the letters, anticipating the click, the quick dragon-snap
of ink on or at paper
he wonders why he's never investigated the inner-workings
of the typewriter
the mechanics
he's never been one to investigate machinery, so why does this interest him now?

finally, a strand of words appear:
i am/no/this/this is me
i am me/typing this/no matter how unlike myself/
these words may seem/
they are me/try as i might/
i cannot abolish myself/
what is essentially me/
anything/any idea/that leaves my body/
never wanders far/
it is bound and shackled to my brain/
like a dog on a leash chasing a boomerang/
back to me/marked by own stubbornly persistent/
voice--

he waits a second and reviews what he's just typed. this is
crap, he decides. pure and simple crap. he rips the paper from the
typewriter and crumples it up into a little ball.
for just a second, he contemplates throwing it--far--out the window, perhaps,
imagines
the thick thud it will make on his neighbor's side-panelling.
finally, he just drops it on the floor--less of a drop and more of a
simple letting go or releasing from his grip (note: this is not a metaphor--unless you'd like it
to be, in which case, it's completely relevant).

he leans back in his chair and lights another cigarette
i know so little about writing, he decides. i know so little about myself.
he looks back over the poem, to the best of his ability, in his brain,
he keeps coming back to the dog on a leash line
the line about the frisbee
(or was it a boomerang?)
being bound and shackled
he can't stand it--the lack of inventiveness
the exhausted metaphors
the cliched cliches

he thinks briefly about a dream he had: dead babies stuffed between the mattress and the wall, under a heap of bedsheets and trash, dumpy girls with dumpy flat asses and dumpy personalities, the shimmer of fur

that might make a good poem, he thinks. if only i knew how to put into words.

he reconfigures his body once more in front of the typewriter, the open window, the only thing
different now being the crumpled ball of paper beside his chair

i've been thinking about thinking about thinking, he writes, and i've acted out of pure selfishness, killing everything i loved....