What is one second on a Monday morning following a night of no sleep in a Dunkin Donuts on some Main Street where I’ll walk with a cigarette for the third time; I think second-hand smoke has been cajoling me, and now I’m awake with nicotine. But what is the difference between a smothered Marlboro light and some nervous lecture on a sad scholarly venture? I cannot pull the smoke vicious into my lungs any more than I can break the vicious stammering circle. And what is one hour of discourse-accompanied indigestion, pacing, and anxiety, if not thirty-six-thousand possible seconds spent in a Dunkin Donuts on Monday mornings with no sleeping? When time is finite and eternal then there is no escaping the monotonous chaos, and we’re thrown about aimlessly, like dice in dimension infinity.

Tonight I'll wait.
I'll wait for exhaustion's tendrils
to curl about my temples
and assist my head
onto to the bed.
I'll wait until your reddened face
blurs and then pixilates
(subtle eyes, you ask me to stay,
I turn and walk away)
Tonight I'll wait.
I'll wait because I have to.
Do you listen to the knives, too?
sharpening and sparking,
igniting the monsters away?
Do you want to play, too?
and not give a ****?
and ****?

round and about discovering
the hidden mosses and evergreen
mosses lichens

down on all fours recovering
the bides of soft scenes seen
tosses like soils moist

brown and rich recalling
the times of a youthful dreaming
spent

discovering the
doe romping fertile in her young
youthful nature growing
seeds sowing
this
remembering.

I hate
as I
meta-
cognate:
you-
are al-
ways there-
you-
profes-
sor- draw-
ing squares-
why-
can't I
dare
to e-
rase the
lines you've
daily
traced?

I’ve spent my days spiraling,
or branching,
triangulating,
and running in circles,
with time always
for counting petals,
or coloring.
My cerebral bouquet,
farewell,
I resign myself
to stems and
straight edges,
at risk, with
tenuous grip,
of an imminent
scalpel-slip,
and the ultimatum
in severed-sphere-
reconstruction.

My brain is a nuisance serpent, a Penelope polyp that recoils, recedes when it is most needed, hides behind itself, shoots into the cavities that have become cannabinoid landmines. I am not sure which parts are mine or whether there has been growth along with the debilitation, and would those ever balance as equalization? Can I discredit myself, credit myself—or I am I one big excuse? I excuse myself as I down one more glass, the neurons glaze, my myelins quieting the electricity; chemically, can I be held responsible for any change in chemistry? Can I qualify the distance between me and who I used to be?—and I’m tired of the Zen critics denying the difference; I try to focus presently, and, oh, I find myself in eternal flowered fields, transitory serenity—servant only to my misery; and so I beg to know: why can’t I stay there? They say we’re shared in suffering, but I’m not asking for consolation! I’m asking for hope—for possibility, that one day I—we—will be consciousness, and not some drifting broken barge atop her ever-swelling sea.