it is so much easier to become known by doing
bad than doing good: shoot
a president, derail a train (killing several
unexpectant people), bomb a plane or big bldg,
kill, sodomize, dismember, and cannibalize a
string of people and the pressure on notability
will build up: but try to improve peoples’
morals (preachers) or instruct them in knowledge
(teachers) and the news will spread slowly:
of course, consequences vary: for the bad
there is a lifetime of retirement (with
study and physical exercise) guaranteed: the
good sink away into the inadequacies of Social
Security: for there is an hierarchy among
criminals: get a parking ticket and the devil
is to pay: open up with a repeater in a crowd
and you get a private escort and suite: those
who do important things are important: the
rest is left over: the old fat man at the Easter
brunch said to the taller old fat man, my
bowling days are done: probably, his balling
days are done, too: the old have time to mull
things over or maul things over, depending on
the history: but should one enter into the
coral-fan immediacy of the present, into the
skinny filaments of ice with thaws coming:
should one hold back from his time, cowering
in long-range views: the tragic commitment to
now, should it be urged: should I push my way
all the way out to the periphery of definition:
out to where the thinning is mist, the risk
high, the taste keen, the present drawn forward
and backward into itself, now, just now, just
now:
THERE ARE PLENTY OF SEATS
UP FRONT