At the ocean floor a shrimp polishes its antennae
Attenuating the noisome accretion
Have the doors of perception been cleansed or merely opened
Drunkenness has never served the punch that’s certain
The end-stopped lines the faulty paradigm
How about an image that’s not a category
A tool a rationale a piece of fruit
How about an allusion that’s not a backslap
A source neither forbearing nor minatory
Eluding specification
Regardless of all the forks the way is just the circuitous way
The difference between mastery and misapprehension
Rarely a matter of definition or enumeration
And hence the dissonance of other people
One grows accustomed to the chronic defect
Assuming of course the primal perfect
And the futility even of acknowledgement
Ceasing to insist upon heroic resistance
And yet the fascinating exoskeleton