They are so wrong.
Whose madness exceeds whose?
They are so wrong; doesn’t make him so right.

Oh the project so vital

Except the project is a waste
And without the project he’s a ghost
For there was only ever this work
And now the work seems like noise
And all he ever does is waste
time energy effort passion

The project is done
But without the project, there’s nothing
that matters, nothing that counts
It’s been lonely, but there was a purpose
It’s gotten grim, but there was a solace
It’s worn boring, but there was a point
Now it’s jut lonely, grim, boring, no point

The project is lost
But without the project, there’s only work
not the worthy work of the project, but the empty work of treading water
Without the project, there’s only effort
but not the breathing effort of Beatuy, but only the gasping effort of organizing your things as you wait to die

The project meant something
Jobs and paying rent meant nothing
The project meant something
Paying US$ to a touch a woman’s shoulder
meant
means
is
leftover confetti
water in hull the pumps ringing and orders too

The water rises slowly
He says he’s sorry to the wall still facing the wall in timeout forever
The water rises gently
But drowning makes you struggle, thrashing about, disturbing the slow and gentle movement of the cold salty sea
The water rises slowly
He tells them it’s a mix-up, but he’s not sure who he’s talking to or exactly what about or why everyone’s allowed to know except him
The water rises quietly
He remembers nothing except for trying to remember and for trying to tell them what he feels and what kind of memories those feelings seem to contain even as they constrain them, swallow them, leave him only with a cut they don’t want to hear about he doesn’t want to talk about but in time it wears you through more than just loneliness and frustration something deeper hollower more consumingly exhausting

Different people on different slopes
with different ideas and different jokes
But all altogether wrong, almost as wrong as they are indifferent to the truth of this faltering pirouette
Because they don’t care, not near nor far is there a glance that wants to while
long enough to know

What slices your gut
What twists the blade ever deeper
What laughs you down into shag rug on plywood floor
what wins by making you always lose
what wins like Trump wins like crime wins like abuse wins like lies win like might-makes-right wins like meanness wins like cruelty wins
what wins like that, with such violence that win-lose inevitably becomes lose-lose, that calls win-win just a loser’s whine

Whatever
The project will stand again
or it won’t
His wife will float in on butterfly wings to rescue him from the lonely hurt and dogging frustration
or she won’t
He will stand upright within himself
or he won’t
The country will choose to share or thuggery will choose itself more and more, with evermore insistent dishonesty and cruelly violent certainty
And these strange trickling sounds that he’s been told are just the vapors of his own madness will either invent real reasons to justify real harm or will fade away into the silence some say they already are
So whatever
It’s not as if
He’s done a great job
dressing the wound and returning nobly and effectively to the holy wars
It’s not like that
It’s more like
a gray squirrel
flinch-flickering his bushy tail
as he bounds across the grass
at the sure-bark of a fatold darkbrown proudround oak tree
with the worms
mindlessly
(or, if his bio-theology’s correct, almost but not quite completely mindlessly)
chugging dirt
in every possible direction
through the soft pitchblack earth below
and some child
crosslegged on the soft bending grasses
picking dandelions
late now in the season
dandelions turned white and puffy
dandelions you can blow into the wind
a wind to carry the tiny fluff-tipped, seed-ballasted sticks
here and there
this way and that
eager to go and never you mind