💾 Archived View for tilde.pink › ~rjcks › poems › jellyfish.gmi captured on 2021-12-03 at 14:04:38. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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My father was a farmer, my grandfather a teacher, my great-grandfather a doctor. I am a jellyfish, washed up on tatty urban beach, watching the rise and fall of the tide but never quite managing to reach the ocean: with one tentacle I snag a coffee which, at least if it doesn't bring clarity, dulls the early morning ache.
I am lonely, stuck in this thin slice of time. All around me the partying crowds move, ethereal togetherness flowing between them, the others, their laughter washing over me in waves. I don't much enjoy it but here I am: I've got used to my life and it has a certain comfort, I get to watch a lot and I'm generally left alone, judged as unsavoury protoplasm loaded with venoms of unknown consequence.
There is nothing but reading: when the comfort and security are assured, the food on the table, the sleeping-pad private and dry, there is only reading, the archeology of texts, an on-going linguistic refinement. Before wrestling with the quiddity of things, their whatness, it is necessary to become acquainted with /le mot/ quiddity, its precedence, usage and intertextual nuances. The anxiety of influence, I think someone once said. Agenbite.
The brittle lense at the mouth of the cave, terrifyingly fragile, it's distortions so familiar and reassuring, sweet lullabies, so that as the cracks appear I am left clutching for meaning, squeezing tightly my empty cup, hoping for just one more sip of re-assurance.