Line

  

Hooked on believing I harbor no addictions,
 
I circle the perimeter of consolation.
 
Sure,
 
I smoked for years, 

but I stayed quit for years too, 

returned and stopped again.

And yes, 

lurching from bouts of drinking 

to sobriety and back may sound obsessive.

But absolution bears no compulsion

nor is it addiction. 

Or is it?

I cop to compulsions, 

short, 

fleeting ones like finishing things, 

completing what I started, 

books, courses, paths, dinner plans, 

stuff like that.

I used to obey rules for the hell of it, 

something compelling and lovely in the rule, 

the principle and the law emitting a magic that moved me.

Until I lost the lust for it, 

cooled on the perfection and rigidity of the line,

the truth of the right angle.

Balancing on the nuance of tightropes flashed a softer luminosity of right.

Since then, 

the lapping years ate those twists and flavors forward to calibration.

Now, 

I leap less, 

wheeze disbelief in equations like cause and effect, 

rules too tight

patterns as solutions,

no, 

not any more, 

the insecurity submerged, 

lost,

moored to the mystery of ignorance.

Dark matter. 

Yet the words

spill

pour me over the rocks and smoke me

chilled

heated

flaming swells of urgency

touch,

pick,

scratch,

gnaw it off the bone

and bloody ears of vein-hydrant flood quelling.

The irresistible line draws me

circumscribed and subsumed complete.

 
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