The Curse of the Titans

I am a pitcher afraid of my power, my wildness, the rawness of my ability. I am in the bullpen, I want to start, so I tried to throw with control, to not make mistakes, to spot it, nip the corners, anything but over the plate, to give the batter what he wants and withhold a little at the last second. I think if I keep doing this I will earn a spot in the rotation. I keep my eyes set on that goal, but my arm is becoming redder and redder because of its power, its need to throw. I need to hurl the ball, through windows, through catchers mitts, through fences, hit batters, load the bases, that is the way to learn control, to tame passion through use, not repress it. That is why I want to be in the starting rotation, so I will (someday) throw, but I need to go to the bullpen and knock a catcher's arm off, instead of lumbering to these mop up situations where I can always blame another pitcher, or long relief where the decisions are given to others. I am afraid of my arm. It has never been this strong before. It has never had the pop to take a ball to places no human can control, to move in inhuman ways, to silence a bat like a wicked tongue.

“The world wouldn't exist if it didn’t have the power to liberate itself.”—Jack Kerouac

Ah, the beauty of the evening's sheen,
As it speaks of endings and final words
After nothing had been said
In the face of so much for so long.
But this vista is comforting
Only because it is unreal,
It is just an appearance, like a smart dress,
A reminder of the hidden truth,
But meaningless beside the real
And its stratums of fear.

Fear inheres in everyone I see,
It's like a common, suffocating breath,
Because behind it lies a truth
That no one feels qualified to admit—
There is nothing between us, at all.

You kept yourself free
By neglecting me,
As my attentions possess
Those who would share the same kinds of wounds
To me.
And why is it, dear sweet universe,
That the one thing we can give
Is not love
But the eyes of God
As we stare down the terrible things we do to each other?
Love is as superficial as the sky
As automatic as breathing,
And it would turn all people into one
Non-person
And would make us no different than the Earth.
And aren't we different from the Earth?
Don't our eyes see darkness?
Don't our mouths speak lies?
Can't we hear in the numb branches
The crying strings of our own unconquerable needs?
Don't we feel, in a world of perfect trajectories, like
Sore thumbs burning at the gut?

When I see the way things are,
Without making them me, and me something else,
Life becomes perfect, simple
And profoundly uninteresting—
An algebraic formulation
A pastoral symphony
A sermon from a place where they refrain from all sin
(In order to become the sinners they've been told they are).
It's a pale imperfect glimmer of the sun's purple eye.
But to maim without intending,
To be tortured for no end,
To be denied these inexplicable desires for no reasons
Within our understanding
Ah, it makes such beauty unfold
It brings such color to the rose
It starts to blush inside us,
It puts the thunderstorm greens and greys
Onto the page,
It reveals in the morning birds
The sound of the innocence you lost,
It gives us joy in something as inconsequential as
Finding underwear in a pillowcase.
It makes the human face as beautiful as the Sphinx
Able to hold all the things which have destroyed the mind,
Subdued the soul, desiccated the heart,
But the smile stays, the glint of eyes
For what an illusion!
How those who will become Gods must first be destroyed.

Look how we drink
From the endless well of life,
Only to feel the pain for what gets lost
And how it's gone forever!
To see death, and nothing else!
God, what an immense and horrible gift!
To call ourselves born,
To take responsibility for creation
Because we know it will die.
And even those with the gift to know
That it can never die
Eventually see the horror of having to repeat
The same savagery, again and again,
The pain the only thing
That doesn't end.
Because all we have to look upon our wounds
Are the eyes of Truth,
But the Truth, of course,
Is that there is no Truth,
Nothing is Real, All is a Dream,
Especially us.

That's why we let the sunset
Spinning fanciful tales of small things
Like heaven and God and how time redeems
Fill the time,
That's why we find enough consolation
In laughing together
At someone's mole
Or calling someone a drunk, a scoundrel, a fool.
And why, sometimes,
When we can't take it anymore,
Like clockwork a man comes on the screen
Saying “love yourself, first,
Wake up
And take responsibility
For your own unhappiness.”
And the laughter is as bitter as it is rich.