Strange, the charge – the larger thrust –
the feeling that you must – the yen to thrive –
the urge to amplify all senses you’re alive –
strange when they don’t come. Reassurance
shuts you up, and – dumb and deaf to it –
and left to the conundrum of your inanition –
your ambition seems to be less to establish
some new basis to arrive more widely
into consciousness than to retreat to stasis.
Pep talks sound like parakeets. All the sweets
Enthusiasm eats taste bitter in your mouth.
Hope goes south. You sigh. You can’t
say you feel better. But somehow you decide
you don’t feel worse. Perhaps that signals
something like the lifting of a curse.