DUNES REVIEW

Fall 2017 (Volume 21, Issue I)

D. R. JAMES

WIRED

—after Jack Myers

 

What was I thinking
when, without qualifications,
except for being as cold
as anyone all last season,
I ran to get elected
County Commissioner of Winter Heat?

I was thinking of warmth,
of course, the irony involved
in commanding the motion of electrons
within a fifty-mile radius of my
two-fold ignorance: geometry
and electrical engineering.

And what was I thinking
when I yearned to prefer
the official wire required
for the job rather than
the under-the-table imitation
available for a little gift of graft?

I was thinking of the Second Coming,
of course, that seek-and-ye-shall-find
system of irrevocability, how
I would want a seat up front.

What I wanted was
inclusion, to be connected,
wired if you will,
to the universe of painlessness
unavailable to those in pain,
by which I mean everyone.

And if I gained favor
by following the ritual
of water-into-wire
then you could count me in,
count me among the sheep,
not those goats also spoken of.

What I didn’t want was what Mugsy
got: jolts at inexact intervals
from an on-going present eternally
separating him from any wire at all.

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