In the vault of a night sky
destroyed by unsuccessful expeditions
my burdening mind concaves again with a clatter
in a slow exiling of gray matter
and the hunks fall like glass and shatter, and scatter
while the man gently shakes my hand.

Tremulous as a magnitude five
I take my chair;
a seed of anxiety blooms in my lungs
yet I steady my feet between the rungs
quieting my reservations with impressions in my tongue
while the trials of competence begin.

Concealed behind wire rim frames
and framed college degrees,
my mortal questionnaire tries to reassure,
as he asks me things that make my thoughts blur,
and leaves me panicking as I endure
while he surmises my life with ease.

I perform in his circus, behave for the crowd,
execute the hoops, the highrise, the hand stands
all while he scores my attempts with his secret systems
reducing my life to statistics and symptoms
prescribes the disorder from which he thinks I’m a victim
and seals my fate along the glossy line of a large, white envelope.