Existential Oatmeal

Emergence and immersion,

re-emergence – and then

slipping back for keeps

into the gruel, no less a fool.

It sleeps, this part of you

which cannot quite affirm the light –

retreats when it becomes too

clarifying. Scarifying fear shames

you with evidence you cannot

fight. It does add drama, though,

this fright. Somewhere, you can’t

remember where, your dreams

got laid away. So you got laid.

You couldn’t sway your terror.

Now there’s always urgent

reason to take flight. But then

the error: slow inveigling glop

stops you instead: you are

lead-heavy in a cauldron

full of existential oatmeal

once again, dropping into mush,

a sinking thing without the last

capacity to push: drowning

in too-facile rhyme, and time.






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