reading dear Sylvia again after a long time

and thinking of the sisterhood that holds her blameless

for everything in the world

how tiresome after all this time

to recall the little (after all) domestic tragedies of the anointed

to be reminded that while Ted may have been standard-issue

male brute his darling wifey was also 'no walk on the beach'

as the trendy Masses now put it

as everything from our collective past

disappears into the blood and menses of this new era

being painfully brought to birth

I can do better than relish the equally bankrupt

academic and cultural institutions

manned (if you'll pardon the expression)

by its own trainees who draw their identities

from their degrees ("Don't tell me what to do!

I graduated from Brown" or Yale or fill in your own blank)

rather than the knowledge they neutralize in vainglory

or missed out on altogether while polishing any number of apples

or turds and to see the canon in exhibits or heard at conferences

curated by some eminence's hysteria

nor need I play the imaginary outsider

coming out of some convenient desert to denounce

these enterprises as blights on the heart and soul

of seeking itself or

be a kept clown for their enlightened group prejudices

everything's going to blow

everything's gotta gooo...

and it is going

rapidly

like snow in the sun

(thanks John that was a great turn of phrase

you one of this described bunch who great and quirky wrote

and paid for his industry following his father

into self-destructed continuance

which brings us back to Sylvia...)

haunted by her own ghost as we all are by ours

but not not quite up to it

oh do not take this for disappointed judgment

I do not judge but simply observe

and isolate what given lesson for myself

I will not take their way

nor the way of their champions

I will be remembered or forgotten

in the coming dispensations

and they shall be also

as time and decay clear us and our works

to make room for all the incoming

even us when the inexorable laws demand

our return

on and on

until we return no more...

Content (c) 2008-2011 Philip Milito.