The Dealer of the Cards and the Windows Between Us

Version 2 [final?] – Start of COVID lockdowns – [4-25-2020]

I, the flyspeck on the wall, seeing through the hands of Devils’ Poker, catch light of the machinations of the powerful. But how to make use of this secret knowledge?

I am a sign of the times, a nonentity to the popular consciousness, yet holding my hidden hand filled with aces.

While you are setting prices and marking time, in between your bouts of breathing and scheming and dying, I shred markets and disconnect communities. I snap out pieces from the New Model, gluing them all together higgledy-piggledy, rendering a monster of the parts not a model airplane.

…Meanwhile that guy was busy taking apart and reassembling bits of his mind, trying to keep an eye on the ever-present threat of destabilization and taking days one-by-one yet always planning, plotting, aspiring to the Cosmic Highway he could never have, the accolades he would never receive. That guy just couldn’t stop himself, though he knew this was always poor practice…

While the both of us and the rest were all locked up, ‘freedom’ spoke its little voice, how we had all been wasting her for years and years beyond years. While the people were not of a mind to travel before, yet locked up travel called to them when they were trapped. While they’d never been of a mind for re-creations of the world all shiny new, yet the little voices began to insist to them on synthesis, ever and over, night after night. While they’d never taken to improvisation, liking everything to be all planned and routinized and automated, yet with the options radically reduced, a lack of scripted interactions forced them into confrontations.

So you all go, dithering in between the spaces of the angels and the spaces of the alleyways and the spaces of the elves and the poets and the spaces of power-over and murder. You take up slack when others are absent, but are thoughtless of your ends. You shade the sprouts when sun would kill, yet take no mind of what is implied in the systems that they must fall, or on occasion, grow in an orderly manner, into. And so you all go, round and round – “I shall lead them round and round!”, you might be thinking! – yet there is no leader and no led, just a chaos of kindness and cruelty, of doomed plans and factions. The gods laugh at the plans of men, indeed, yet where were they when you triumphed? Gods are of small account, on this side of the window.

But I always continue on, the sugar ant in the windows, the one with all the levers, the dealer of the cards. On your world I am this yet your world is only a shadow of a shadow of a shadow on a speck on a speck on speck in a endlessly countlessly infinite field, and elsewhere I am otherwise, yet still myself. How can this be?

[4-27-2020]

I’m including the original draft here in case anyone is interested in the process or instructionally. As someone told me once ‘you have to give the readers something to hold on to’. No matter how pretty the abstractions might seem to me initially, in this case at least, building them out with a little more concreteness and scaffolding is an improvement and easier to follow. And it shows me that there can be a lot more to a first draft than appears at first sight.

I would call this poetry in paragraphs or very long lines (the draft lines take up a lot more space on paper), I’m not sure if its exactly ‘prose poetry’. Or maybe it’s exactly that if you look at a dictionary. It seems to me to have more rhythm than an object of prose. But as I write it, the practice in my mind is “a poem with paragraph breaks and no or few line breaks”.

Draft 1 (from paper) – [10-19-2018]

Flyspeck on the wall observes between hands of poker the machinations of the powerful to great effect.

Sign of the times, non-entity to the popular consciousness, hidden hand of great sway.

Setting prices and marking time, in between breathing and scheming, shredding markets & cooking up communities, snapping out the pieces of the new model.

Taking apart and reassembling his mind, mindful of the chances of maladaptiveness, spinning wheels over cosmic highway, taking days 1 by 1.

While we were not of a mind to travel, yet travel called us; while we were not of a mind to synthesize, yet we were insisted to synthesis; while we were not of a mind to improvise, yet the lack of script was just what we needed.

So it goes, riding the in-between spaces between angels & alleyways, taking up the slack where others were absent, shading the new sprouts where the sun would kill, so it goes, on and on.