M. C. Rush


Redaction Comics #1

You want me to identify and describe the seven confusions for you,
or I want you to want me to,
but I won't. I can't, or I could but I won't,
or I could and it wouldn't matter,
wouldn't help, wouldn't change anything.

Someone wants me to observe and explicate the operation,
but I am not going to do it
because the process is opaque or
because the process is complicated and uninteresting
or because I lack the interest, the time, the motivation.

I want you to clarify the system for me,
but you aren't going to do it,
aren't even going to bother to refuse to do it,
because it doesn't matter to you that I don't matter to you.



Assertion

The last of the previous,
the first of the next,
the narrative narcotic
desperate to conform
for hypothetical rewards,
evolved mechanisms for coping
with lack of control,
with violence in service of justice,
with arbitrary deadlines,
tortures bitter and sweet.

The thrice-created,
once in flesh and its history,
once in word and its insistent present,
and once in dream and its futures.



Wanna-Be

I am so different
than I thought myself
and exactly the same
as when I first thought myself.

My name for myself
is Observer Who Sometimes Acts
and Sometimes Refrains from Acting
but Mostly Waits Too Long.

Despite my second-best efforts, there are so many
things about me that strike me as wrong.
I'm an approximation of myself.
A low-fidelity version. Diluted.

A wanna-be me,
nodding to the teasing pleas of inconsistency.




M. C. Rush currently resides in Mississippi, has most recently published poems in Rat's Ass Review, streetcake magazine,and Third Wednesday, and has a recent chapbook, The Animal Commitments (Finishing Line Press, 2019) and a forthcoming book, Late Utopia.
 
 
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