Circuit Party

“Tell all the truth but tell it slant
Success in Circuit lies…”

Emily Dickinson


Success in circuit lies
but when the circuit pries
the lid off every expectation –
leaves you coughing in the stirred-up
rust and dust – well, let me fail

for moments to decide to
carry on: let me sway
insensibly into a midnight –
fight the inclination to stay up –
pretend that sleep’s a practice-run

for shutting down for good – and, knock
on wood, conjure up a tolerable nothingness
to which, on cue, I might descend, and from which
I might then emerge, when I've more stamina
for all this waking verging into life –

whose chaos is a good deal
less apparently adventure,
sometimes, than a rife
suspension of all
reasonable rules. The only antidote I can imagine

to this foolishness is death – but let me know, from time to time,
a simulacrum of it that permits some future breath.
Let this circuit party have a cake
that I can have and eat:
surely that’s the grand, withheld eternal treat.