The Thinker (For We Whom Abuse Our Multitasking Mental Faculty)

As I sat on the bus this evening forcing myself to digest two excerpts from DuBois’ “The Souls of Black Folk” while listening to an NBC Nightly News podcast, I felt a great overwhelming friction occurring in my head.  It is not an unusual feeling.  I feel it often when I attempt to do too much in the course of studying or engaging in dialogue.  I usually work through it until the mental fatigue passes.

In this particular instance, I took the machete of the mind to DuBois’ dense rainforest of prose until I was done and then decided that I would sit the book down until I arrived home for I felt I might read these two excerpts a second time for understanding.  Because I lack the capacity to sit still, I decided that I should write something while the bus was en route.

“The Thinker” is the final result of this effort.  It is perhaps the 4th or 5th sonnet I have written in my time as a writer for I am much more a fan of free verse and unreconstructed verbal discharge.  Rules in writing occasionally bore me.  At other times, they excite me.  This is nothing too tough.  Simply my way of grappling with the pressure gauge that my brain has built up during the course of study and my attempt to kick open a valve.

Writing ticks away tectonic tension
Exhausted tepid shifting plate of mind
Pause on precipice of new intention
Whittling tools of thought to pass the time

History hath no need of happenstance
I can predict the course of each event
Instead of weathering the winds of chance
Where mistakes are foreseen I may prevent

Use vigilance to seek out wisdom’s crumbs
Experiment each day with what works now
Neither gnawing of nails nor twiddling thumbs
Questioning Who What When Where Why & How

Construct where curious brain now tinkers
I am this willful & winsome thinker.