The Tower Reversed
What serves you has changed,
echoic commands
are your only incantations now—
repeat to yourself everything that’s never worked,
try it again
see if it fits,
squeeze yourself into its celebration of letting you go,
you have a tendency to show concern
to pictures of things
that never lived and never died
you break at the thought of fire,
mostly because you’re always so cold
and you welcome heat,
even if it burns
the world is turning in your favor, and because you are who you are
and we are who we are, we love thinking ourselves incapable,
it’s easier to hide, to clean the house or re-arrange the refrigerator
than it is
to file away your success
in the undernails of your knowing
success scares you,
because
with success comes a thorn to produce
it comes with waking up,
it comes with a contract to obligation
not the sleepy lids
of immunity
