Outcome Dubious

Joseph Osako
20 July 2006 
If I have any talent, 
it is
Doubt

I have much practice at it
having doubted every aspect
of myself
every moment of my life
every thought and feeling
for so long
that I often wonder
if I will ever believe anything.

Rejecting the cool, cynical 
scientific materialism
and technocratic triumphalism
of my teen years
just as surely as I reject
the sheepish, sheep-like
faith of my childhood.

Rejecting moreover
the joyful madness of my twenties
the desperate and self-conscious mania
which propelled me across a continent
to look for something
anything
which I wouldn't have to doubt.

Doubting my words and deeds
and then doubting my reasons 
for such self-dissection

Doubting my tastes and habits
my sex and desire and gender
doubting my humanity
doubting my dreams and goals
doubting my competency and skill
doubting my professionalism
doubting my joys and pains
doubting my sanity
or lack thereof
doubting my very existence

And now this skeptical inner eye
turns balefully upon itself,
doubting doubt - 
have I questioned too much?
not enough?
Do I truly
doubt at all, or 
is it a pose
an intellectual game
of the sort that sullen and
bookish men
who never let themselves be young
yet grew old without growing up
play to keep the incessant internal monologue
occupied for just a little longer?

I would try to find an answer,
but I have spent half a lifetime
seeking them, and
even if I found one
I would surely doubt that, too.