Riding the Serpent

Traversing the tops and the bottoms and sides
of each gliding meandering question, you almost
enjoy the weird harrowing ride – as you slide
to the middle, hang onto the wobbling hump on
the back of the snaky reptilian chump who appears
to be running the show, whose ridiculous takes
on the fast and the slow and the little and big make

a quizzical jig of each blundering stab at establishing
grounds for an answer. Astoundingly fancy
shenanigans play in the spaces you’ve prayed
might be filled with clear air: murk in the sky of each day
tends to slay the least hope of allaying the funk.
Ferreting through these immense misconstrued
hills of towering junk, you debunk only this: that thinking

can’t miss. And yet there is something appealing,
erect, circumspect in the mode you’ve protectively
labeled “the intellect” – something so sweet in the treat
of pretending there’s meat to be hunted and fried
into logical tenets of cause and effect. The heck
and the hell of inspection – of riding each gliding
meandering question back into the stable, to put away

wet – is something you’d have to regret to give up.
The reptile you’re saddled to hisses: “Live up to
the nonsense and make it beat time: parse everything
into a rhyme. Slithering over each fence for the thrilling
suspense: who cares if it never makes sense?”
Though on Eden apparently God dropped
the curtain, it isn’t so bad to be riding the serpent.


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