The Anxiety of Influence
Lyrics by John Brenner.
Aporia
Keep your present mind. Swarming in Sunless caves, only useless
effort. Gadfly be humble yet. Keep silent, bitter no less, plaything of the
winds. It is words no longer. A child, I am wronged.
The raven has now gorged a lofty fear.
The wise want love, the world wants to be betrayed.
Some new bliss: the death of us, an overthrow, my poverty, confused to ill.
I survived.
Mimesis
An unfinished business, a
longing for the gutter. Lose life to find victory. Give me a place to stand. Who
cannot lift himself? My reader, my double, my brother. The right to be let
alone: No more deadly curse. Weary without challenge, this monster of habit, the
womb of monsters. Something's gotta happen. If he could he’d want to sing, or
glow, or burst, or cry.
Impossible to enslave, beast of muddy brain. The work of art, a confession. Art is long, life short. The sweetest inclination. In fear of oblivion, patient enough to toil, the soil is bare. I have set my affairs on nothing: The pit, the pendulum.
No coward soul is mine, beautiful twilight, martyrs by the thousands. With
wisdom grows doubt. Breathes there the man with soul so dead. In the night that
covers me, the head, the heart, the hand. I am the grass: I cover all.