Monday, December 21, 2015

DUNGEON MAP

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.