My Own Subjectivity Bothers Me

for Brian Blanchfield

But yours is intoxicating with its modest, beneficent tone:

the remaking of yours to mine in nods of agreement.

Poetry is a fundraiser for the faux haughty,

but also a trident for the humble.

This is an achievement.

Perhaps it's because there are always three ways to solve a problem if prodded:

To flounder unbecomingly

To guess with adoration

To adorn, privately and publicly

The requirements make me confused

because the lack of detachment

to each is the new climax.

But that's only how to respond to one person—not several.

Duress for the appropriate equation makes a kind of thinking

subtract itself with no uncanny sphere.

We become diviners in principle where subjectivity is rueful:

our foregrounds mark our behavior and our cultural context.

Let's give in to self-praise.

Let's be stalwarts together.

Source: Undergloom (Fence Books)