But Do You Love Me?

                   Socratics 

I. Avoiding the Pedagogical Temptation
              to Force the Issue 

For a moment, when we were commenting
on fundamentalism, and sin and damnation
I thought maybe someone would introduce
"Young Goodman Brown" and the irony of
the bad it takes to get good.

{A “goodie” is someone who wants to be good
so bad he can’t afford the bad it takes to get
good, know what I mean?  Goodies abound. 
                         Galore!)

But we didn’t go there, and I wasn’t going to
force the issue. I hate that.  It’s a form of cerebral
rape  you all are maybe so used/abused to it, it
feels normal:  but I gave it up years ago

    Like asking someone “Do you love me?”

Forcing the issue. The response you get  (Oh, yes,
of course I  do) is never satisfying, so I got to ask
again and again & never get no satisfaction.
     
             Well, do you love me now?

Forcing the issue. If it’s not going to come naturally,
then there’s no pleasure in it. IT, I said. Do I always
have to be spelling IT out?

          II.    Environmental Issues

Ask your self: how can consciousness  KNOW the
UN-CONSCIOUS —which rules— without reducing
it to conscious process, like  talking about sphere
in terms of a flat  line?
 
Am I aware my voiced-to-voiceless alveolar fricative 
plural-variations depend upon—are governed by—the 
environmental conditions  of the final segments of the
noun I  unconsciously pluralize?

How do I do this? What does it take to lift a finger?
Tongue-tap the alveolar ridge? maintain the valved
hum of a low-back vowel? the glide of a voiced glottal?
How do I sustain such unconscious capabilities
& environed mentalism?  

 
[Once Faulkner & Joyce exposed their
streams of unconsciousness offending
my linear habits of beginnings, middles,
& endings; and then  80's MTV, damnit,
began generating constellations of imagery
non sequitur to whatever lyrical sequence
was going on & on: my sense  of Show &
Tell took a hit, ambushed by internal
providential explosive devices
until it became clear to me
what a merely convenient
truth a sequence is—&
because & affect
too..]