Irritability Index

(this is a rewrite of the last poem posted in my last depot - which stopped allowing me to edit before I could effect a replacement. Ah, cyberspace!)


Are spirits for swilling? – or willing
an outcome? – for fostering kneeling,
and reeling on knees? Would they
freeze us at oxygen-lessening heights? –
are they toxic? – depressing? –

unspeakable frights? Is their mission
to shock or to please? Do spirits rely
on our deep measured breaths? – or
avail with steep pleasure – or clean up
our messes with depths of transcendent

intensity? Would they rather that we
be more sexual, or intellectual? Vexing
and flighty, these sprites! – set on
bagging a me or a you through some
agony, ecstasy – or an abstrusely erect

resurrection: is God in the pew? –
or in screwing until we are blue? Which
one of us seems to be sneaking or
strolling or barging or dropping or floating
or gamboling into the True? I've only

this index assessing the moment: it’s not
of my virtues or failings or boredoms,
esthetics or brains – but irritability’s
losses and gains. I know if I'm het up or not.
That’s as much as I’ve got of the plot.