Circuit Party

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

Emily Dickinson
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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.

Biology discerns the certainty of dying –

but if I told you that I liked it, I'd be lying.

.