R. Winters

unbalanced people
try to tell me something about
replenishment,

as i think about unseen
exertions and exculpations
unsorted in
file folders virtual and virtuous

don't get trapped in
stutter stark
dark too-coolness
-- it's all distraction now
but it was needs before. well.

you look at the rolls
trying to find a set to play,
numbers and phrases to wager,
magic combinations:
you always have this industry with you,
skimming indexes and archives
for something permanent within
the listed flux,
the perfection that's always added to,
orgasmic addendums,
ecstatic et ceteras. o it's good
when the printed word
matches what's in the mind.

                    gives a better
place to look back to, to resume,
after interruptions, bed scene changes.

[found my place and now i
toss-n-turn in it,
pickled pig of shamanistic delight,
a new symbol to puzzle over.]

ii.

the aim is, maybe—i now
go talking about a desire
i have not attained, thinking
that failure's been instructive
when it hasn't even
been informative—to tip
metaphorical scales to reach
some obscured internal calibration:
up this mineral, but then
this vitamin might go haywire,
this level needs wants attention. so
enter in alternate thespian, no
understudy but a third agonist.
i put in, i take out, i am ant.

[o you'd better
be quick with mercy, 'cause
the body does not
wait around.]

Posted 11/03/10