11:40 pm

sometimes the night comes early
fast like the lid of a pepper-jar
that spins itself geometric into place
sometimes though it is patient
like the swarm of a moss
or of a tide that turns time
to obese slime
sometimes there is so much to say
and do and wish for
sometimes very less
sometimes, the past nights
become other people
and future nights
become other people
and they sway like drain worms
round a puddle
on a tile
we are a crowd
all of us, a crowd -
body upon body like
an ugly cluster of skin
and shadow and grasp
we write things and we make them poems
then we write more
and we are all naked, but none truer
and sometimes the night
does not come at all
and I linger solidly
fidgeting with my words

01:16 am

and this night
things are gentler

pillow - the stuffed owl and the clock,
swivel of silence
and stray dust; white-lit
hands as shadows
moulding themselves around limbs

and sensation:
a simple news
to the heart: a moth-wing
watching the light,
its ticks
timed with the pulses
of time -
it watches slowly
the light

—

and this night
we are gentler
body on body - like mingled wave,
ripples trail
but carefully so
as all fish sleep
or rest

—

and tonight
the weight
is just a weight

—

and tonight
there are no flutters
                          to drown to

01:10 am

there is a number for everything
all strange surrenders
and imaginative threads
of stars that predicting move
and men predicted on;
like resonating blackness
of a still night,
the numerals scatter
symmetric in their magnet-dance
and then they write

every step,
every tide, buzzing
with possibilities,
burning intensely to one—
why do I doubt the hold of this?
this puppetry Law
and its fingers of strings
why do I think to flea?
I move a piece
on the chessboard of pieces
and something in me changes forever

02:37 am

I have something more to say
frail like a young stem
something just as green

I think if I were to die:
here; now
I would not be upset
and I think if I were told just now
that I was to live
forever here
I would not be upset still

and it is sweetly silly
that love makes
letting go easy—
sometimes, perhaps
perhaps a short love only
a sensation that visits
only in the gentlest of nights

perhaps this will be my lover
and my war
perhaps it will be one
because it will be other
it is sweetly silly

12:30 am

I like poetry
I like the tenderness of it
and how it is like a leaf
I may slip into my pocket
and carry along
into stifling examination halls

I like its thoughts
the gaps and turns
it does not ask for cleverness
from me
as I do
it is not a mother
and not a child

a poem, a poem only
silly and free
like a fly
that does not care for freedom
or like a little gust
in a thousand crowd:

the hair furls
I turn to watch it go
but it is gone
before i do

12:40 am

this is not sadness
I said wrong
this is pillow, pen
a patience of time
in between its clicks
like a chess move halted
for a carriage of thought
this is books
I never read

this is not the books I read
they sagged
to stale pale stories
but this is a passage one forgets
among a pile of others
like this
this is the stillness that breathes me
in and out
through the night

this is not sadness
this is… like tea

02:30 am

something of tiring
soothes the soul
lemon eyes
lettuce body
and yield

when thoughts swivel,
as vision bugs, in moving mind
when the cradle of the heart
rocks
and bed
becomes an anchor
a tundra ecosystem
of surrender:

the breaths
faintly white like
gentle ash
ruffle around,
and something little of the jaw
lets go a little,
and the fingers
stop fighting

time disperses
and all writing stops.