The day has in store
flashes of last night’s dreams
I don’t recall having. They dash
across my vision
too suddenly for me
to snatch back; today it is the sight
of my face, one eye bright and
glazed, one opaque and
blank. A headache from
the distorted view
does not know
which one to blame.
the smell of summer
expands so sweetly around me
I trip over my breaths— I sense
the vacuum in my chest
fights for air.
it’s like…
how should I describe it? it’s like
a single seed. almond shaped, delicate
fragile, in a tender way. floating easily
upon the unseen air. and if it had a mind
a sense of itself, it would be so
fucking
lost.
but it isn’t, y’know? because
the seed, it belongs. it is part
of the whole. even in this vast, spaceless
space of a space it floats along, finds
a place to settle
and calls it home. and calls the ground
familiar.
or the hollow echoes of a penny
once-spinning at the bottom
of a jar. if it had a mouth
it would say
do you remember me?
that day
that moment
when i was
alive.
to you.
some days are so light
that the wind carries them off
too swiftly. and you snatch in your fists
nothing but warm, spring air.
— Emily Dickinson - “No Rack Can Torture Me”
— Stephen Crane - “You Say You Are Holy”
You are sometimes quite ridiculous
in these pursuits of yours;
your whimful half-baked ideas
are like embers in your mouth
that burn and burn and burn,
and are quenched by your own
saliva. So I hope you never
forget this, this glowing coal you did
succeed in swallowing whole
(though with much coughing and gagging).
Call yourself empty, but
as you know, emptiness
is white cloths, flapping in the wind,
and there is always a garden
behind the white cloths
and a copse of trees
and birds and bunnies
and snakes and drakes
and squirrels. And dirt.
Good, wholesome
dirt.
So, dear me,
wear this on your chest with pride.
And let yourself be happy
for these words
were yours.
Three o’clock and the night air bites
through the paneless window—
it is always the chill of these pre-spring nights
that lays bare a self’s small woes.
Heady are the foggy rays of a streetlight
which secretly, I’d like to believe
are the soundless songs of the bright
sleep-fairy who frolics within her cocoon.
Deep is the sleep she does promise
oblivion is the spirit she brews;
there is not a soul alive who is
immune to the pull of the earth.
Yet still the sheets do pull and warp
relentless in their pursuits
their only goal to usurp
a nightly dose of respite.
To the silent sidewalk,
obsequiously prostrate
at my feet, I say:
Arise
fair knight
your crimes
are forgiven,
you may
once more
live and fight
and seek
glory.
But the sidewalk
speaks not.
