Anticipating pleasure
— counting, banking, trading, surviving
on what’s to come —
sets our breed apart, they say,
from brutes for whom all’s ever
now or never.
But there’s a diabolic downside
to this being
forever ahead of the game:
<i>My enemy’s enemy
is my friend.</i>
Just so, despite ourselves,
to spite ourselves,
we fast-forward
to the sequel’s sequel
and know then that there’s no
pleasure in’t,
just pain,
an incommensurable currency,
as both now and then
pick up speed
and the whole pre-emptive pyramid
forecloses on itself.