Reality – for d’Verse

Posted on June 29, 2017 by

                      1976

Reality is a Breakfast Tray

Containing nuts, bolts, and mildewed blocks.

Overflowing, the contents fall off the edge.

Empty, it thuds dully when thumped.

In bad weather it warps, and sometimes cracks.

About Nan Mykel

I used to think I would be a child prodigy, but then I got old. Formerly I had fantasies of rubbing elbows with cultural and academic leaders but that did not come to pass because I did not become a cultural or academic leader or any other kind of leader, for that matter. I am not even an "Alpha Dog," a term learned from a friend who had to become "Alpha Dog" in order to influence her own pet. (When gazes lock, she never looks away.) For years I expected to become a published author, but in passing I could not avoid the fact that I had little to contribute to the world's bulging dumpsters. I'm embarrassed to report that I also considered my primary process artistic productions powerful, rather than mildly neurotic. Which is not to say that I disrespect myself, only that I am beginning to doubt my potential for making a mark on the world. If I focus on strict self discipline I may be able to keep my garbage removed on a weekly basis, to keep the kitty box changed, the clothes cleaned, the dog watered, fed and walked, but that just catches me up to the starting mark again. When writing I physically grapple with words, wrestling them from their indifference into attempted chunks of awareness. I sit heavily on my chair; I breathe in artificially cooled air; my ear drums note the tap tap of the keyboard and the steady uninterrupted sound of the air conditioner, What is that sound? The roar of the ocean from 30 yards away...Inside, my thoughts are are balls in an electronic game machine, bouncing hither and yon from lever to lever. I am a little grim and intent until I recall a dream related by a black man in the prison where I once worked. He said that when he was a small boy, back home, he dreamed he was standing on his front porch pissing, and that he suddenly found himself pissing stars...
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15 Responses to Reality – for d’Verse

  2. frankhubeny says:
    June 29, 2017 at 9:56 pm

    Reality can be depressing. I don’t like things warping. I put together some bookcases in the basement made out of cheap softwood. Some of the boards where warped. I still used them.

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  3. colorfulpen says:
    June 30, 2017 at 12:44 am

    Reality, not all its cracked up to be.

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    Reply
  4. sarahsouthwest says:
    June 30, 2017 at 3:41 am

    Oh, bleak. Too much or too little. I want to put something beautiful on your tray, like a single rose.

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  5. Bev says:
    June 30, 2017 at 1:07 pm

    …and sometimes reality is something special and lovely just waiting to be found …

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    Reply
  6. Björn Rudberg (brudberg) says:
    June 30, 2017 at 3:29 pm

    I hope that reality could be something more than that … like walking barefoot or something..

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    Reply
  7. jillys2016 says:
    July 2, 2017 at 6:00 pm

    Such an apt metaphor; reality is indeed something that can be empty at times.

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    Reply
  8. Victoria C. Slotto says:
    July 2, 2017 at 7:32 pm

    Reality changes so much as we age, doesn’t it. For me, I have to remind myself “today will be happy.” It’s that darn warped tray that doesn’t work as well as it used to.

    Like

    Reply

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