The Underside

You stuttered once so badly that the only
virtue you could understand was verbal
fluency: one craves the thing one lacks.

But now, somehow, when something like
a lingual flow has intermittently bestowed
itself through some unprecedented crack –

you take it back: you disavow the craving:
streams of endless verbiage, as slick as eels,
have, in themselves, about as much appeal

as breeding slime. What piques disgust
today is just the thing that used to ache
in you for easy eloquence: now badinage,

per se, seems like a stark banality:
a sickening misuse of time. But why such
vehemence? Passionate disgust is suspect:

lift its heavy stone to see what on its
underside may really be disturbing. Curb
the quick conclusion: and examine it for

opposites: its curse may well embed in its
reverse: caught in the conviction’s passively
aggressive rear. And what, when you lift up

the stone of your abhorrence of the glib,
appears? A hologram of mirrors: into which
you glide like Rita Hayworth in “The Lady from

Shanghai.” Still here: glassy maze of fear.
And yet a hologram: a quirk. Doesn’t matter
what you think of anything. Do your work.


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