I must keep perilously barreling
past and through,
or else run
the risk of eternal paralysis—if caught too
careful, too regretfully—inside of some cautiously over-
lit room or other, replete
with pulpwood faces collapsed hard over paper coffee
cups, stirred a little
too surreptitiously, with balsa splints
in lieu of spoons
because there simply isn't any sugar
to measure.
I'm sure
I was born better
than this, I'll curse. I am not so ambivalent
as these others.
I am not so
one-dimensional. This may be hell, but I am not
averse to what's
in the next room. I am not afraid. I'm just exhausted
and too selfish to leave here, bereft
of all feeling, save for
this deep and luxurious intellectual concern—
that there
actually isn't any next room
beyond the one in which I'm stalled. That there's
really no way out of here
at all. And that hulking impersonal
black and clear
door over there, the one with the largish
handle, on which is printed
PULL
TO GO BACKWARDS FROM HERE
TO WHERE YOU WERE
is only
painted-on.