how to live

a guide

to those trying to

measure morals:

– cut into paper before it

cuts into you

– cannibalize self-doubt such as whether you can

cannibalize the doubting self

– stay starved and bleeding and unrealized

surprising yourself at mesmerising inconsistency

– die

– write a little space for yourself in nothing but

space as blank as you when you weren’t you but

have continued now as nothing contemplating nothing and nothing but

nothing

–  be a reinvention of always

– know there has never been a revolution save for a circle

that has never been known there where the revolution was needed

– listen to others who listened to others who said if only they hadn’t listened so much

– eat tuna salad with little salad

– [insert dreams here]

– suffer boredom at the shaking hands of excitement

feel alone in a full room

draw trees on paper

pretend you are not you

which is a you thing to do

– be broken by morning or breakfast

– sit still waiting for something but you cannot remember what

as the thought that this may have been it

collapses into your warm solid lap

– die

– look at art while it looks at you

wondering what angle you need to take on

to take it on

– don’t don’t

– understand that it is always the rich who gnaw about

the unimportance of money while the poor are busy pouring

– realize that some only see race

for they have been at the blackened burnt end

from trees they helped plant

that are as brown and rough as they

that need the sun to bless beauty in their skinny bark

– learn to unlearn nonlearning

– wear an astronaut helmet down a busy street

– buy a disastrous animal that is thoughtless and thankless and

thank it for your calm and steady thoughts

– hear that she has gone to where the two of you had planned in sunshine

and apparently sent a lot of letters explaining what never reached you

which was really just her again

on an other day

on the other subway car

going the other way

looking at one another

remembering

smiling

until you never see her again

–  die

but before

live tragically

live incomprehensibly

live amorally

live unmeasured