THE GUIDE

THE GUIDE

Sometimes
No
Other times
No
All time
Now
Yes
Forms for here
Forms for there
Forms for somewhere else
Forms for words
Forms for turds
Forms to go
Forms to come
Forms for forms
Forms, forms, forms
Forms

Meanings with meaningless
Applications
Pages upon pages
Of forms
In a bureaucracy of Rumsfeldian grammar

So many concise words
Known knowns and unknowns
Lost in transition
Transmogrified
Into
English that is not English
But it is English

The stutter of the pen
The typo of the keyboard
Within the star studded box
To be confounded
To be frustrated
By the growing confusion
In one’s perspiring thoughts
To question the very questions
What do they mean
What did that mean
Was the answer
My answer
The right answer
I don’t know

I turn to the person behind me
Thrust the form under their eyes
And squint and point
At a question that is questionable
And squeak
‘Do you know?’
They respond with a glazed little
Tiny ‘no’

Feet shuffle back and forth
The pressure builds upon my thoughts
The queue behind me
Grows and grows
And the pen stops working
I perspire with desperation
And plead to the counter staff
A pen, a pen
My personal space for a pen
Just to bring this to an end

Wet spots cover the form
Ink runs into words
Words run into ink
The form transforms
Into a non-form state
I need a new form

Time passes
The background shuffling
Becomes a stamping
A new form
I receive
With a fresh pen
Madness devours my thoughts
Responses become blind
My thinking has come to an end
My answers are beyond my mind
I fill out the form
With speed and no understanding
I finish and hand over the form
My thoughts turned to visualizing
Me walking through the sliding doors
And out into the fresh breath inhale
Of the world

Two words shatter the glass
Of my sliding door departure
‘Take a seat’
So I take ticket
And wait in line to take seat
My eyes hang down
At the bottom of my eyelids
All of this done and yet to come
To change my address
Forms, forms, forms.