ON GENEROSITY for H. Marshall Peter

NOT WHAT GIVEN NOT WHAT GIVEN NOW WHAT GIVEN NOT

is what came out of earth when we squeezed it like a pimple a tourniqueted

banana or burn point it bled like cotton like Joe Biltz before poverty but bent to the pretzel point, Hawaii say, someplace where the needy are whisked away to spend their limited time tormented by our generosity fucking hounded by it to the point of apoplexy reeling with pin pricks of good fortune in a hard bare bones Beckettian landscape: a cow, a dumpster, a dog in goggles, two Samaritans approach absolutely glowing with compassion, suffused with the memory of the rush good works bring and feed the indigent a cocktail of chill pills, suppository, of course, and when their anuses are chock-a-block stuffed with pharmaceutical good cheer they vomit, confident that their peristaltic contraction won’t hinder the joy absorption and the drift to the faraway.

WARREN BUFFET GREASES THE CABBIE WITH A JACKSON THE man who just won 200 large with a seven/deuce hits him with a Franklin the four anarchists invite him to a party the guy carrying a cash register says get us the fuck outta town and I’ll split it with ya.  And now they’re partners.    

NOTHING GIVEN IS ENTIRE UNTO ITSELF NO GIFT HOVERS IN air but is tethered to great sheets of billowing Dacron full of the prevailing mood-habit-wind-placebo-excuse-rumor-desire-burn to feel better to get on top of that empathy lump and ride it all the way down to a godlike granting of boon amongst those crowded on the dock waiting for that mythic ship to come in.

WHAT YOU DON’T USE IS LEFTOVER.  HANDING THAT OUT IS

merely not throwing away we’d throw all the uneaten pizza in a box and put it out on the dumpster, gone in minutes almost warm Canadian Bacon and Pineapple, Pepperoni & Prayer, and anchovies anchovies anchovies stuck in a mysterious cheesy mass aching with mushrooms, hormones, and cheap first date angst.

WHAT YOU HAVE LEFT IS THE ONLY BAROMETER WORTH A shit.  So the halo’s hard to hoist lest you’re willing to do without without without what?  Your own personal library?  Argh.  For that matter, I don’t want to do without an olive orchard and a view.  Material things these, for giving away love does not diminish.  Even if you could give away friends, who would want them?  The generation of friendship is a unique energy in each case, you don’t own it and it ain’t for sale.  So when I buy five hundred bucks worth of ducks that don’t quack it’s a slap on the back to one who does the work and has asked while the abused push against the walls of the compound.  Cracks appear, chunks of plaster fall, someone has broken all the glass imbedded in the top of the wall.  We wait for the time when those who have received decide it’s time to take and generosity be damned. 

11 August 2014