Jumping Off

When did I last find something worth creating?

he said as he wrote down myriad triangles of spiral

thoughts and vested interests. When did I last

find something worth creating?

In the end, the answer was a simple one: there

was never something worth creating, just as

there was never something to begin with.

It was always just there.

In a dream once, it came to him,

like some kind of prose powerpoint presentation:

the image of man standing ankle-deep in a puddle,

clutching the remnants of a skeletal umbrella,

and whispering softly as the rain, "I am free."

It echoed throughout him, a vague vessel

for the entirety of existence to swell into,

and it sounded like thunder on the horizon

when the sky grows green.

I could light a lamp, he thought. I could paint

a masterpiece. I could troll in shallower waters,

near the banks and under the fallen trees,

and maybe then I might catch something

worth filleting, cooking and eating.

But that all seemed too easy, like every book

ever written that has the same story in it

Homer wrote three thousand years ago.

Like every book worth reading is a story

we all knew in the first place, a story we

were all born with, a story placed in our heads

by that speckle of stardust we all carry around,

that we recognize somewhere inside

when thunder rolls on the horizon

and lightning turns the sky gray-green.

How the wind blows sometimes

he thought, and it did, straight through

the meager tenement apartment,

crackling paper and lighting up dust

like a great battle on a dry plain

hungering for the blood of creativity

to pull it from the stacks and make

something of it in the end. But

something became too much too quickly

and that was it, the same meaning, over

and over and over again, that it all was

written ten thousand times before

and all will be written ten thousand times

again and if just one word might be different

somewhere

he wanted to know it. He wanted to see

the word and smell the word like a thunderstorm

on a dry summer night,

with lips cracked and bleeding

from a lack of foresight

and he wanted to taste

water

and

lightning

and

simmer

in the

brightening

newness of summer white light

on pale golden water

a moment before

the dive.