The purpose of this exercise is to prove that red, at a deep enough depth, looks blue.
*
That light runs over the same beige bramble of brain.
*
I believe in the dialectic.
*
This hopscotch across hedonism, this day held up, cowlicked, & humbled by another.
*
It’s a handle if you don’t forget it’s a hatchet—the blade’s question mark at the top.
*
More people would rather be the most miserable person than the most pleasured pig.
*
A pen your bones become part of the filth of if you fall in.
*
I’ve devoured animal after animal, let them bite a little back, seen the sting & liked it better that way.
*
Now I’m sure I’m ununderstandable, gravel in a tire, an umbrella warning of a wrung-out sky.
*
How I swear I’m the smartest in a room and the cranium most full of fried egg.
*
Neither is true, so one is more true.
*
Recycled in the basin of a fountain or rotten in its plumbing, all thought is rain.
*
Don’t trust me right now.
*
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.
*
In the hours they write, philosophers ask how long one’s legs can shamble, not guided by a mind.
*
A pig’s head, separated from the body, aspires to aspic, head cheese.
*
When I look at my head on the microscope platter, I see two planets on course to collide or kiss.
*
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.
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0)
