THE SOLUTION EATS ITS OWN TAIL
It’s an elegant hobby, to monologue
about these abnormal times, or rather,
it’s an extravagance to craft a fantasy
road map to two tablets of guideposts,
decisiveness carved into stone, while
drinking liquors imported from a dream,
some previously unheard-of elixir
that we pour into water and watch
it snake through the ice like
a bloodstream, then dissipate, raising
a glass to the miles that brought it to
this room, these walls lit by sconces
and held by a voice singing a wordless
melody, all the while knowing a bill
will come due, and all of the decisions
we make tonight are in disappearing ink,
words spoken to an ear that can easily brush
a strand of hair back across its drum.
Robert Krut is the author of four books: Watch Me Trick Ghosts, The Now Dark Sky, Setting Us All on Fire (which received the Codhill Poetry Award), This Is the Ocean, and The Spider Sermons. His work has appeared in numerous journals, including Gulf Coast, Passages North, Blackbird, and more. He lives in Los Angeles, and teaches at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Further information can be found at www.robert-krut.com.