Dr. Redacted will tell me not to tell you
this, like this,
in a poem: how it’s all right, love, that we don’t love
living. Even actors don’t
exactly love the spotlight they move through,
as your sister, the actor,
has told us; they just need to be lit
for narrative motion
to have meaning. As such it is
with artifice and embarrassment
that I move through fear
to you, tonight, where I had dreams,
a short nap ago, about lines
of poetry I struck through
with everyday blues, month after
month, in dream
after dream; an attempt
I guess to forget, if I could: defeat
sometimes is defeat
without purpose.