A Willingness To Be Shaken

is required of adventurers, lest their minds
be lost: caught riveted betwixt channels,

transfixed by the waxy, clattering progress
of the blade, its dark rubric limning

just the soundless edge.

And each of us in it up to our elbows and knees;
shame hot against our faces, we grasp at

the somehow still warm tatters of a self
no one could want, least of all

anyone of this crew, which
I can tell has standards.

I’m walking away from that cheap suit
like class always does,

with ceremony.