But Sometimes There are Perks

Don’t you hate it when you’re sitting

half-submerged in perfect cool-warm water

just a step down from the smoothly tiled ledge

that rims your favorite oblong swimming pool,

about as utterly unwittingly a fool as you would 
never have remotely known you were had those 
irradiating radiating lines of force now verging, 
coursing from your spine not just begun again

to undermine belief that there might, finally, be

some relief from the resurgence of their outward

push, which keep you wrestling restlessly with

all the stupid shock and mindless ambush

of existence, eternally determining to block

whatever small incursion your embattled psyche

might this time have dared to hope to make into

at least a slightly greater if still theoretic likelihood

of spending several minutes in from what those

unafflicted few around you drew their reassurance:

shared reality – some sense, however specious,

of a commonality? But sometimes there are perks.

Novelties, distractions, glittery arresting little things –

say, angel wings. This time round you grow a pair

of those. Perhaps this time you’ll even get
to fly with them. Before you decompose.

.