The sign said, “Who wants to be anything?”
I thought: indeed — who wants to be anything
when you can be anything at all?
Who wants to limit yourself to what you see on a sign?
Who wants to limit yourself to what you can find
on a school day, a weeknight, a weekend?
Who wants to be anything when you have to sit still
and learn the new rules to be the same person they had before and lost —
the same person they had before and abused?
Who wants to be anything when you can stand at attention
and learn the commands, be free of the burden of ample thought,
so long as you’ve got the shoulders to carry a heavy cross?
Who wants to be anything when you can be nothing at all —
slip imperceptibly into and out of, into and out of,
one joyous, hellacious scenario after another?
Who wants to be anything when there’s any money at stake,
and no money at stake, and the chance to have all or nothing?
I don’t want to be anything at all.
I want to continue to be nothing.
I’ll continue to be nothing until the nothingness displaces all the emptiness.
Until the quantity has a quality unto itself.
Until the danger of day-to-day existence is only supplanted
by the danger of what happens when you look into the abyss
time after time, after time,
and don’t give a flying f*ck if you stand on the edge,
if you get crushed by a cow, or if you jump in headfirst.
F*ck it all!