Dispel me, Jesus, if you’re not too business.
I’m sliding down the slothful passages
to that heavy-lidded place
where I’m money, office, disingenuous.
Helping hand, excess sweetness.
I look out into blank and peaceful:
quiet, indirection, the most vaporous
of solutions. I look out into blank
and peaceful as if the whole purpose
of the storm were to overturn the skiff.
To shear off… But drowning’s
adjacent to breathless, being there
as Violetta sings the last startling aria.
Inflicting and sewing up wounds
when what we require is air and music.