Virtuoso

teacher, master

you learned me virtues

every helping I wanted

I begged you to stop.

Stop.

Before I'm too full of virtue

there won't be no room for nothing else;

after days of virtue-pushing

you ask me late into the evening:

what else is there?

Do you ask as teacher or master?

Will you demand what you ask, when

will you demand, I can't seem to count costs now

convoluted arithmetics, obscured counting

between infinite objects and numbers,

no equitable treatment of my equation

no object named and scope limited

no purpose qualified or content quantified

just the endless filling, feeling endless—

is virtue really as unlimited as you say

as you exercise day over day

upon my malleable relation with you?

I want and don't want. Simultaneous hold,

body fixed at once in two locations

want and unwant, can't take back

what's come before is already always coming

will be, will be, will be coming, still

to imagine differently, indiscreet it may be

but enough posturing, embracing this bi-located

body-state-of-being, here I am, send me

to carry banners transfixed with light in these temporary corridors

betwixt and between, between

hoping and turning, turning and hoping

here I am, I can be nowhere else

but the two places I'm already coming from

and going to

will there be an end to this seems-infinite play?

Who, who, who can say? I will not know, not today,

nor any day soon, nor any day soon.