Edgework

It seems a bleak predicament

Standing on the brink, keeping the annihilating plunge waiting

It does pull the masks from trivial things masquerading

As vital, or urgent, or strictly obligatory for a normal human

Disease has transformed me into a Branch Davidian

Crazed, cultic connotations altogether removed

And replaced by the mischievous misanthropy

Of a neurotic, spiteful comedian

Larry David taught me, cunningly, to use my disability

As justification for missing pointless, stupid meetings

With other humans who think calling meetings is an art

Or a remedy for the nervous loneliness of an otherwise empty

Office that you are not really sure that you deserve

"I'm sorry, my affliction is acting up; ordinarily, I would happily attend..."

The gentle hand of polite mendacity smooths the ego's feathers

Every insipid absurdity human beings have invented

Has an escape hatch, camouflaged and code protected

First class knows the code, second class must find a way

To get it out of them before they realize what is going on

Most of modern existence in most places at most times

Does not seem especially impressive or believable

If you take a close, unflinching look

How much will the filter you chose before posting that photo

Matter to those you leave behind, when you stop living?

When you can see the edge clearly

With no glamorous, improbable exit ex machina to hand

You come to grips with the brevity of everything

Including fear

You begin to wonder why you have been patiently obeying

Instructions that insult your intelligence

A free trial is still a trial, and they are never truly free

How many six digit codes do you want to commit

To that warehouse of disposable nonsense

That has become your memory?

How much longer can we all sustain the illusion

The zone in which sunny fiction tries to conceal

The general rot and rapid disintegration

Of everything we used to recognize as the world?

When you have just started, or when you have ambition

All of it seems evanescent, malleable as wet sand on the beach

Your castle will rise in time from this worthless, illegible pile

Sure, most of it disgusts or frightens you when you look closely

But it's temporary; you can take it for a while, for you know

You will ascend in time, and power means comfort and safety

The trouble is that your reasoning is faulty

Based on quaint myths that are busy exploding

Nothing is owed to you

That is not specified in the language of the agreement

Which you signed in the absence of the slightest duress

If you think I've really got your nose

That's on you, kid

Now do as I say, for as long as you must

To keep starvation on the street at bay for another week

You are not someone, you are something

A means of achieving our goals, as the owners

Of this operation, whether a corporation, or a state

As if any difference remains

When that way of being

Has coaxed you to the lip of nothingness

Of ceasing to be, or becoming something else

You can discern the causes of your undoing

Intractable as they may be

Have you noticed that everything

Has become customer service?

And the online reviews

Had better sparkle

Or you can find a new way to secure food and lodging

I'm not just expressing solidarity with doordashers

I am suggesting that most of us are doordashers

Orthopedic surgeons, orthodontists, ornithologists

With fancier titles and no dental plan

The humans are interchangeable, disposable

Unimportant, given the throng of desperate applicants

Brimming with what we will greedily drink

Until, empty, they are recycled responsibly

When you contemplate the edge

You recognize that you have always lived

Close enough to it to recognize a neighbor

Who has no love for you at all

Patient and calm as a monk woven into a tapestry

Knowing you will turn up eventually

Certain that the daily, sufferable indignities

Will drink your sunny parapets and fat drawbridge

Like the divine, saline tide

Know that before you take those last steps

You had better have some stunning adventures

To rehearse in the private theater of your imagination

Before gravity confirms that you cannot fly after all

Do not believe them when they tell you that things are improving

Wait for the testimony of your own tired, ocular orbs

You are no mere means, no tool

For as long as we have been thinking, we have known

The difference between the bonobo and the twig

Used to scrape the honey from the ribs of the fallen hive

Which of them ought we to identify with?

The user, or the tool?

Tell me, have you ever used a tool?

Have you known the ecstatic frisson of achieving

With Fred Astaire grace what you could not have managed

Without this tool at your disposal?

How rapidly did the amnesia clean up after the satisfaction?

Erasing the second act, in which your goal or sketch or design

Massaged the world into the shape you wished it would adopt?

Without the tool, how could you possibly have done it?

But you feel no obligation to mention it in your tearful acceptance speech

What kind of screenwriter shouts out her laptop?

Now consider the bonobo and the hive, that womb of golden sweetness

The twig she uses carefully to probe each oddly geometrical recess

Is you, if you are simply a party to a temporary contract

Flexile and supple as the beach becomes when wet

The edge is closing fast, and all that holds it on the horizon

Is a little language followed by your sacred mark

You are a maker, you are the user, you are not thing

Demand that your plain, ordinary dignity

Be recognized and relished by a creature just like you

Who happens to be the other party to the arrangement

And therefore has had their nature warped and inflated

Another peculiar primate just like you, with grand delusions

That others feel obliged to acknowledge as rudely real

Before you plunge, remember, we all head for it in time

Those who use and discard you are also mortal through and through

You might get a glimpse of their form

As they cascade across the edge and rush to join you

Below