He floats there near the bottom,
Dragged and anchored like a ship
To seabed by rusted fetters,
Down where ***** shuffle a slow
Ribbon dance, twirling black seaweeds
And long grasses,
Where they snap out a rhythm
In solemn beatnik fashion to mournful
Whale songs like low saxophone moans,
And where the disapproving clucks
Of dolphins’ tongues echo
In quiet communal protest.

His body floats bloated in brine,
Cheeks puffed like wet bread,
Skin grey and shadowed blueblack,
His face slack,
Broad chest beaconed out of dark waters
By dim pleated streams
Of ocean light.

the word spreads itself
across my tongue, thick
and stiff as carcass flesh,
bones locked, ligaments
taut, as though tensed
for the crushing tide of oblivion—
the weight of nothingness
instead of water.

my tongue is dense as earth,
cold and steeley
as a silver autopsy table,
and the word lies supine,
exposed upon my lips.

wring me out
of everything—
all the thoughts damp
with mildew, old rotten mind,
brain like brown ground beef,
pale with dead blood
and green with fuzz.
wring me out.
when you are finished,
there may be nothing left—
hardly anything left, but
extract this mentality
like sebum from a blemish on my cheek.

There will be nothing left.

i tell time by the switching
      on        and        off
of fluorescent lights. there is no
sunset, only night
then day
and night again.

my head glows alight
with chatter. brain cells burn
inside like the bright
infernal filament of a bulb.
my skin and skull
are made of smooth, round glass.

please
do not gaze too intensely
at my madness, for it is painful
to behold. your eyes
may water, throat tight with tears
at what you cannot fix—
at what you cannot control...

for a moment
it feels as though the urgent heaviness
of my breath were pushing
pulling at the boughs of bright dead
leaves
and then I realize

that it is only the wind
I begin to shake with dry
laughter at the absurdity
of my thoughts
catch my reflection in a puddle
at my feet
my eyes are terrifying

i mean terrified

trees break through the ground
all around me, reaching climbing
endlessly upward as
towering neuronal bodies
erected as extensions of the earth’s wild head and the earth
becomes an extension
of my being

i cannot seem to control this
but that is all I wish to do

i am crushed by my impermanence
yet I flee to its consequence
planning my ascension
to ascend as a tree
my bones a relic of everything
i was

trees break through the ground
i think the ground is shaking
but it is only my limbs

half-barren treetops mock me
dendritic and unpredictable
phrenic and phrenetic
reflecting body and mind
at every level:

nerves and neurons branch out
to relay messages
of pain agony suffering

phalangeal forms diverge
From a hand

limb and head from abdomen

dendrite from soma cell body
a symmetry to which
there is no end.

for a moment
it feels as though the urgent heaviness
of my breath were pushing
pulling at the boughs of bright dead
leaves
and then I realize

that it is only the wind.

in the city,
dead leaves skitter across
rough concrete, hushing me,
whispering out my past

and future—brown bodies blown
without the sturdiness
of a branch or root,
cast aside by cold, arid wind,

dropped,
with no one to claim them
but the young, bright children
who like to hear their brittle bones

collapse beneath booted heels,
and the white, indifferent snow
that covers—
buries the broken pieces.

I sit squat in the hollows
Of this massive skull.
It is where my weight resides—
Just inside the great cathedral arches
Of the brow bone.
I can look only outward at the world

From these odd windows and lay mute.
Under my door,
A draft sneaks in from a passageway,
And I wonder what now lies beyond.
I can only imagine, for there are bits of me—
Parts of my own psyche that are terribly,

Painfully inaccessible—dusty corridors left
Long untrodden to savage, rotten things
And hidden gems
Locked in safes in rooms
Closed off behind shut doors,
And here I sit,

Separate from it all—
The bad and the good,
—in this cold, dank and empty
Space lined by stone-bone walls, door fastened
From without.
Now some fiend has come

And locked me in,
Locked it from the other side.
I cannot escape. If only I had let the anguish storm through—
Felt it ripping raw against my skin—if only I had not
Stowed it away in some remote
Recess in the far reaches of my mind

To fester and to grow. If only I could now live
Without this severance from myself.
If only, if only...