The Elucidating Imbecility

by Guy Kettelhack
Wild Poetry Forum
Third Place, January 2020
Judged by R.T. Castleberry


Felt as pressure of a pulse –
faint convulsion of an incrementally
increasing stress of interest
in that glint wedged in the smallest
tightest bit of aperture beneath
the sharpest darkest edge – you place
.
a bet here that you probably should
try to hedge – to risk your life
on random outcomes – hoping to be
mollified by compromise when doubt
comes. Then doubt comes and becomes
the certainty of doom, which offers
.
you exactly what doom said it would:
catastrophe. But she and her imaginary
cohort weren’t the kind that ever
hedged a bet. Anyone who thought
they could procure their safety or that
there would be an end to anything
.
had lost their practicable mind. What
there always was and is and will be
is infinity: a reason to resume. Since
none of it will stop, the doom will doom,
with room for all imaginable other
possibility – including new varieties
.
of doom, including the elucidating
imbecility of thinking you could hedge
a bet, resize the risk. What risk could
you minimize? That of never being
able to withdraw? That’s not
a risk, dear. That’s the law.


A specifically worded, precise and very funny explanation as to how and why the person being addressed is acting like an imbecile. --R.T. Castleberry