LAST MINUTE MUSINGS

Now all I do anymore

is spin my web of words

Everyday I am at my weaving machine

everyday my webs grow longer and longer

hoping to catch someone up within its entanglement

It has been a lonely web I've woven

empty of its pray

like a spider

everyday

it is all I can do

to continue spinning and weaving

my long strands of words together

patiently waiting for some hapless victim

to fall within its lair

I've given up on most every other way

I can no longer build mountains

from minor mole hills

or reinvent the wheel

or play with fire

my webs refract the light but poorly

always trying to figure out some new design

to catch up the light

to create new rainbows of color

new patterns of line and shadow

playing with the sun and shade

everyday a different pattern

a different topography of meaning

a novel approach

though no prey strike within my lair

I've come to enjoy my daily spinning

an epigrapher I've become

writing last one liners

row after row

time upon time

day by day

everyday knitting epigraphs

about everything and anything

transforming all reality

epigrammatically

upon a type-faced

two dimensional paper world

commemorating the dead

celebrating life

commiserating the sad and tragic

in basic Anglo-Saxon

conferring a solidity of meaning

concretizing ideas

conceits and other fictions

as if they were of some stone-like substance

I cannot help my epigraphic tendencies

It is a curious sort of madness

an obsessive-compulsive fixation

upon the keyboard of the typewriter

commentary and critique

of generalia divers and sundry

I do not know why I do it

except that it helps me to continue

like a clock that marks my passing

into small meaningful units

composing my life

coping with death

Human being in the mirror

another person in a reversed world

the reversed world of the other

seen through the silver window

of a looking glass reality

a strange, alien being

with a wild look in the eyes

and a queer

but familiar expression

upon the face

we think we see our own reflection

but it is only the trick

of our ego in mimicry

of our transparent vanity

and looking-glass illusion

stranger in silent, perfect pantomime

of our every gesture

our every move

so self-impressed are we

that we fail to see the other's impression

upon the smooth surface of our reality

we cannot imagine what it is like

to be looking from the inside out

our fingertips touch in cold identity

at the interface of our glassy essence

of our shared reality

we speak but cannot hear

what the others are saying

catching it off guard

from out of the corners of our eyes

When we redouble the mirrors

upon our own being

we open up the doors of infinity

in the presence of alternative possibility

frames within frames within frames

diminishing forever into hyperbolic space

at that frozen moment

we create an endless bridge between two worlds

a physical window onto our inner reality

redoubling the mirrors

we create the abyss of our own being

an infinitude of simultaneous selves

looking into the time tunnel of eternity

we come then upon the edge

of the labyrinth of our understanding

looking along our own horizons

seen for once as a parallel point of perspective

turning the mirrors upon themselves

we momentarily forget the possibility

of our own presence

absorbed we become

in the glassy illusions of our reality

each frame is broken upon the edge

by the frame which it contains

each successive image is incomplete

filled in only by our multiple imaginings

turning the mirrors upon our selves

we learn the lesson

of our own depth of vision

and of our own fragile superficiality

turning this way, then that

there is ultimately no escaping

Why is written in the wrinkles

whispered in the wind

why is where the world began

and where it will end

why is the way the water falls from the sky

and washes down the hillside

why is a dream that sleeps in silence

It is the solitude we feel

when we are alone

why is a life that's full of death

and death that's full of life

why waits patiently

while everything else changes

and still remains when all else passes away

a newborn baby screams why

at the top of its lungs

we breath why

every moment of our being

and it parts us

when we come to our end

why is the laughter

that comes with the tears

and the tears that flow with laughter

why rises with the sun and the moon

and shines forth from every star

why sits upon every horizon

whys is the victor's demise

and the final victory of the defeated

why is found in the proud person's ignorance

and in the poor person's lessons

why cannot be measured by money

or weighed by material things

it cannot be explained in theory or by science

and does not wait for words

1994-5

Blanket Copyright, Hugh M. Lewis, © 2005. Use of this text governed by fair use policy--permission to make copies of this text is granted for purposes of research and non-profit instruction only.

Last Updated: 09/18/06