Recounting Failures

MI 2010

Never do remember how bad failure feels.
How slick, stuck, overpowering, all knowing, all seeing, all
acting, all wise, and
temporary.

That vein-pop,
strain on the lower back, blood sprinting upstream to my cheeks.

I can only cringe at the long washed away aftertaste.
How is it I can never remember how thick a bite it really is?
Is this what
people talk about
when they talk about
"blocking it out"?

Or, is this a too-cruel joke on us,
the humans. This is what we get
for a life of plastic spoons and paper napkins. We get
to relive each failure--worse than the last.
There's no strength in that.

Or, is this harsh repetition just
attempt at survival. The only way we could ever scootch off the mattress,
into tennis shoes, exercise, read, go to work, dine with family.
God help us if we remembered the screaming mistakes of past.
Falling short, falling out.
We could not then look even in a mirror. It would be a fast-over life.
Living in swamp of errors is not a life.

I'm not sure, but I know
I can't know what it was like then.
In those times.
I cannot remember until it's happening.