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Pleasure Principle

"an umbrella warning of a wrung-out sky"

Published onFeb 19, 2023
Pleasure Principle

Photo by Aline Nadai: Pexels.com

The purpose of this exercise is to prove that red, at a deep enough depth, looks blue.

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That light runs over the same beige bramble of brain.

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I believe in the dialectic.

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This hopscotch across hedonism, this day held up, cowlicked, & humbled by another.

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It’s a handle if you don’t forget it’s a hatchet—the blade’s question mark at the top.

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More people would rather be the most miserable person than the most pleasured pig.

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A pen your bones become part of the filth of if you fall in. 

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I’ve devoured animal after animal, let them bite a little back, seen the sting & liked it better that way.

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Now I’m sure I’m ununderstandable, gravel in a tire, an umbrella warning of a wrung-out sky.

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How I swear I’m the smartest in a room and the cranium most full of fried egg.

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Neither is true, so one is more true.

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Recycled in the basin of a fountain or rotten in its plumbing, all thought is rain.

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Don’t trust me right now.

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But it’s honest when I say, my lover & I argue, then I wash the dishes under too hot water & imagine my skin sloughing down the drain. 

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In the hours they write, philosophers ask how long one’s legs can shamble, not guided by a mind. 

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A pig’s head, separated from the body, aspires to aspic, head cheese.

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When I look at my head on the microscope platter, I see two planets on course to collide or kiss.

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One, I named pleasure, the other I named pain. 


Lucas Jorgensen is a poet and educator from Cleveland, Ohio. He has his MFA from New York University, and is currently a PhD student at the University of North Texas. His work has previously appeared in or is forthcoming from Poetry, The Massachusetts Review, Pleaides, Fugue, and others.

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