From the Series "How to Work"

1.
It doesn’t follow that with the best intentions
The best results, the greatest satisfaction follows.
Not that we would deny those dreamers of dreams
Big and small, that what they hoped to achieve
May fall into the most propitious assembly.
A picture doesn’t get taken just by gazing out
Into space; nor is space made by closing one’s eyes
And imagining the world within a two hundred
Square foot apartment. Things have to be done
Not always the things one might expect, but something
Must be struck from the ground, the sky, the sea
Some action following the deft delirium that
Completes the venture from one set of futilities
To another, takes you swimming with it, if only
To feel the gliding of events, since it is probably
As important that we feel them as they feel us.
And the inevitable sacrifices dicing up our hearts
May then yield a strange kind of growth that surprises
Mildly, but well enough to feel our pores breathing.
That’s what they set out to ask us about, and all
The pictures standing next to the casket were of things
Taking effect, and lacing into the seemingly unending
Triumph of the fixity running uphill against itself.

2.
You may be pregnant with an action or idea
And for a long time that is how you’ve been
Somewhat hopeful, alarmed, discomfited
Until someone bursts into your cube asking
How many centimeters are you now ready to push.
Nothing can be done, nothing stand in your way
Though you might need to wait for it to roll
Over on you, with big nyloned legs and steel spokes
Because in some ways the completion of a thought
Is like digestion, other times the unearthing
Of an ancient weapon, while laying down
A foundation, feeling the desire to impregnate
The earth with your boundaries, rigid descriptions
Of that which cries for trampling over. And so
The mice come, and the flees and the ants and worms
Tearing apart what you thought was your piece de resistance.
And in a cubical alone a single matador
Bows to his reflection before booting up. The sequence
Has gone live and the impetus is buried in the facts
Of development. Rude impositions strike to make
One better than merely a tool, but a value
Or valued asset among innumerable flag stations
The stones vacationing along Broadway, waiting for
A peculiar kind of usage to redeem them: insertion.

3.
If you go out to hunt and gather you must engage
Your mind, though it be a soldier’s whore, a fenced in
Field of weeds, a box of rotten chocolates, evil
Design and paranoia engendered in the very tissue
Of the medulla oblongata. And all the funk
That grows out of it hence. But you have grown
To appreciate this mess and even revel in its works
From time to time, though you may be inclined to wish
You had an off switch, and so years of meditation
Practice has gotten you very far. It seems, according
To recent research to thicken the tissues of
The neo-frontal cortex, which is good news
For anyone wishing to stave off Alzheimer’s
But maybe not for those who rely on you not being
So thick-headed. Because meditators, you may have found
Tend to be the center of their universe, and that’s
Good, for the meditator. One also needs to have
A fundamental understanding of language and its
Relationship to the body, and its actions. Thoughts
And physiology travel together as their work
Is systematically entwined, according to Dr. Grinder
And Dr. Bandler, and their student, Mr. Dilts
And that whole army of thera-priests and trainers.

4.
There is really no distinction between work
And play, it is true, but who wants to play the same
Game over and over again, and who wants to
Play with those who demand that one plays with them
The game they want to play without recourse
To one’s own desires. That is why, while playing
One needs to hold silently in one’s mind another
Set of rules which make the game another game
And for which one can keep one’s own score
And change them when one wishes. After all, most
Kids who want to play, who really want
The same game played every time are lacking
In what it takes to see and need to be shown how to
Play, if only through the subtle gestures of hypnosis
Over a longish period of time until they as well
Begin to move in stranger directions
Than they have been used to. The whole world is like this
And so the world may be our target audience
Since some less than benevolent despots will tend
To play at making gruesome their games must mutate
Into another set of rules that don’t include mutilations
Of any kind, or sapping the spirits of their players
Dragging off to work unsubtly needing an off switch.

5.
When I say one must hold in ones mind another
Set of rules, what is it that I mean, since there
Is actually nothing to hold and nowhere
To hold something, but this is an act of imagining
And that is work too, perhaps one’s primary
Work, since most of us don’t even, if we’re laboring
Manually, build something to completion
And even beginning demands imaginary work
Of saying to oneself, what will these bricks look like
When they become a wall, how will the ruddy rising
Be offset by the verdigris of the garden
The azure or the boiling gray of the sky. What will it
Feel like to lean against its shady face while the sun
Remembering fleetingly in a fairer season
The intense rays of heat striking down on your defenseless
Head and torso, your dripping limbs. Recreating
Those sensations and recombining them with the world
As you have found it today, that is work as well
Though possibly not the work you credit yourself
With doing. And if you are one of those who like myself
Spends hours tapping on a keyboard and yapping
On the phone in a cubicle, imagining a world
Then there is even more work to be done. So do it.

6.
To imagine a world in which columns and rows
Of data exist in tables, and coordinates
Drape over space so that the postmaster
Can find you when it’s time to send you the bill
And even money somehow valued by the interaction
Of those columns and rows, manifestos
Of circuitry that are made manifest through observation
Through wincing and caring, so that any real information
Is actually held in your muscle tension, images
In the brain, phantom sounds and inner babble
Bundled together to create a world of value
Of the places you need to be at particular times
During the day, vs. what you’d really like
To be doing. When you multiply that by several
Billion, allowing for variation of some expanse
The inter-currency effect is that you have a world
Economy, beginning with you and your bundle
Of nervous energy accumulates over time
And maintained minute by minute by your every
Action, expectation you’ve learned and feel you need
To have, to be who you are and what is that
But all you know, having little choice in the matter
Needing to dispel as much conflict as possible.

7.
The whole body enables the brain to think—we are
The minds appropriate to upright quadripeds
Not disembodied Cartesian sailors floating
On an ethereal sea. It is the mind of two eyes
A nose, a mouth, two ears, hands that give our thoughts reach
Two feet that feel out for us a place to stand
And work is designed around an animal who thinks
He is one thing but lives as something else entirely—
Rectangular keyboards, for the hands and chairs
Which cause tension and disk compression
It is up to you to fill the gaps and this should
Be done not by some recognized distributor
Of ergonomic salvation, but by one’s own
Efforts, since it is both the body and the mind
Traveling as a unit, that is ill from too much work
And not this and that. Not pieces not fitting together
As we often find ourselves amiss and incompetent
We have designed a world in which we work
Around a metaphysics trying to disown
How lust and love of music both drive and distract
The operations we partake in, hurrying from
One state to the next as if a plasma of some sort
Was surging through electric cables in a desert.