That unknown bodiless entities employ
Our brains at night as virtual reality theaters
Seems, if not beyond all question, utter
Rubbish of the sort we’d say is amply

Proved in evidentiary terms.
The chief thing is: it’s safe. The volts and amps
Are all to code. The wiring diagrams
Will show that, during active REM sleep, motor

Nerves are disengaged. The bloody thrash
Is not enacted bodily in bed.
Otherwise, sheet-wound like feuding Bedouins
We’d wake to mayhem in marriage. Sheesh,

What a—say, are you awake? For pity’s
Sake, Sweetheart, tell me, what “entities”?

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Richard Kenney teaches at the University of Washington’s marine laboratories in Friday Harbor.


 



This article originally appeared in The New Criterion, Volume 27 Number 1, on page 29
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