These are worries:
bad realizations and
unfocussed eyes.
These too:
Feeling something raw,
and also vague panics—
when everything beneath
drops far below and leaves
no breath at all.

When the breathing
returns heavy in your ear
and five nails in a circle
on your back
remind you just how real
you could be,
it’s easy to fret
(unwaveringly)
someone is walking
through something
beautiful; nature maybe,
complaining about bad directions.

I started thinking:
What would I say to myself (if it wasn’t too late)?
You know, to the fragile pieces
that I’d like very much to
point fingers at with a crowd, impress them!
I could show them—
show how much I’m not like that.

In so many mirages I can still
go and sit and blow smoke
in the cold with myself, feeling
so many things unraveling in chapter 6
(when I have to choose whether
to fight or stay with Andromache)
flustered and failing to find a friend in my own words.

Maybe I could pick up the shards,
or say something pretentious?
“They’re better left untouched”
But it’s wrong to leave everything
so I’ll pretend an oracle told me to
pester pleasantries and good, and
pretty, pettifogging alliterations.

Sir Michael sat on the riverbank, quietly,
sure beyond question that he wasn’t there.
Feverishly he searched the running water;
There it was, his jumbled reflection, blurred,
he couldn’t trust his eyes anyway.

Michael perfumed his hands with the soft wet mud,
deeply inhaling the earth’s pungency, and there were his fingers, his palms—
faintly, unconvincingly, incarnate.

The odor pulsed with Michael’s breathing,
hands fading with each expulsion of air,
reappearing with the intensity of their scent.
Sound.

Pursing his mouth, Michael whistled loudly, and
basked in the physicality of his atonal cry.
Ah, he inhaled again, there were his hands;
exhaled through tightly sealed lips, there were his ears,
outlines in a coloring book, filled lightly for a moment with
a vibrancy, a shrill whistle.

Sliding closer to the edge now, peering into the quivering
canvas of hazy mirrors—this was not enough;
he held his breath, and let go.
Touch.

The icy water ravaged every crevice of skin,
each pore suddenly illuminated, existing.
Air! But there was none; Michael’s lungs
filled with his own reflection.
Air! But there was nowhere for it to go, Michael’s body
began in the water, and would end if he surfaced.

Sir Michael fell to the bottom of the riverbank, quiet as death,
sure beyond question that he was there.
Here I am, he thought.

Hans was outside himself. Perched on the edge of a daydream, he looked below, distantly aware of his bustling dinner table. How casually they live, Hans thought; with what feigned clarity they can connect and understand. There were his brothers and sisters; his aunts, uncles, cousins and ah—there was his father. Look at him personifying repugnance, locks of hair falling clumsily on his tattered shirt. Look at him! (Hans could yell only in silence.) Look there and see him cloyingly preparing his knife to hunt, to tear, to slice yet another hunk of meat for his own gluttony. With what excitement—what vivid, forbidden ecstasy Hans would take his father’s knife and turn the hunter into the hunted.

Somewhere in the cluttered abyss there was a sound followed by a warming light. Hans was entranced. And again, a gentle thunder followed by a thread of heat connecting for a moment earth and sky, father, family, and son.

It was goodness and caring, it was a mother’s voice. It was this graceful fluttering in the medium of time that awoke a primitive yearning in Hans, grabbed his throat and stared him lustily in the eyes. What could it be? Hans wondered aloud, what could it be that she desires, for he already knew that he had to be the one to deliver any object she longed for, to slay any beast that tormented her—it had to be him, to be Hans, to be her son.

Please, she said; can someone please pour me a glass of water. Oh how Hans was enraged to find that this whim had not been made solely of a son. It was his right to quench his mother’s thirst; it was his place within the natural order to satisfy her needs. What cruelty and ice! Hans said, but also felt; and in an instant returned to himself below, tumbling violently from the high canopy of his trance to the sight of his father’s filthy hand reaching for the water jug.

In base impulse, Hans jabbed at the jug, forcibly pushing aside the carnal hand. Upon contact, Hans felt an overwhelming calm, an absolute peace. He wrapped his fingers tightly around the handle, closed his eyes, and breathed deeply. At once he was joyous, he was spent; he was adrenalized and gloriously dominant. He would be the one to tend to the maternal flower, supplying water for a thirst that he prayed would always be there.

It’s nearly quiet now.

I should get up to

close the curtains—

they’re not all the way shut.

A strip of glowing glass

burns between the curtains

Maybe open eyes will

let me rest for a while

before waking to noisy dreams again tomorrow

In the bed next to mine

my brother is asleep; content.

I think I’ll stay awake a little longer.

It may have started with
bouncing ***** and funny old men,
this stretching of time. But
it’s not that anymore.
Now it’s being awake, too, too long
at night and having all this to think about and
Feeling jittery from a coffee I had at 8 p.m.
so I could feel precise and dry with engorged veins
rolling over the bones in my hands
while I typed and typing
to sound smarter than I am (we both know)
in poems like this one; barren so I could
rush things.

I’m tired of thought experiments
and nervousness; I get sad when I think about
what I’m doing with numbers because
all I’m really doing is subtracting
and sneaking a few minutes with a piano
to feel like I can finally close my eyes.