#631

They're Dead

They should scare me
but then
they have become
such familiar ghosts.


15 December 1988
 
  

An inconsequential little poem don’t you think. And it is on one level. I, however, have the advantage of being able to look ahead and I know what poem #632 is all about. I might’ve skipped this poem otherwise. And it’s not just the next poem. It’s the next few years. Familiarity breeds contempt. Amongst other things.

I wonder if it’s fair to describe writers as haunted individuals. When I wrote this poem I certainly was.

In economics, diminishing returns is the decrease in the marginal (incremental) output of a production process as the amount of a single factor of production is incrementally increased, while the amounts of all other factors of production stay constant.

Yeah, I haven’t got a clue what that means either. That’s not how I understand it. The way I think about it is that the second cookie is never as good as the first and by the time you’ve got to the bottom of the packet you’ve pretty much lost all interest. The same goes for fear and guilt the same as for pleasure. The first lie is the hardest but the first cut is only the deepest if someone else wields the knife.