I woke up at angles with you
---a parallelogram, opposite but equal,
my thoughts in constant rotating view
---a diagram, showing us where
our homes are laid to rest,
where streets became dead spiders
caught in their own webs.

If we are in transit via tunnel,
aqueduct, or escalator,
it might be cinema.

If we lose atlas in the worship of light,
it might be cinema.

But I can't find you here;
here, where they used to build ships
from sand and steam
and science fiction;
where they used to design
buildings so as to create
a dissonant and mournful
whistling sound when wind
blew through them
---ostentatious things;
dead people’s things.

Through walls and underneath concrete, dug so deeply
into the wide plains
and withered, gnarled tree roots
of an agonizer's conurbation,
is a space halfway to the zenith,
charting the prescribed power
of in-betweenness.

Never again will we draw meaning from
our proximity to one another.

My inner voice, a chatty friend,
When sleep I seek, its whispers blend.
It lures me to its side,
And bids my slumber to confide.

It babbles on, without a pause,
Its endless chatter makes me doze.
I try to hush its gentle plea,
But sleep eludes me, it mocks me.

Oh, inner voice, I beg of thee,
Please grant me peace, and set me free.
Release your grip, and let me rest,
For sleep I long, my weary quest.

~
She stands on the roof of the world, a ship in a bottle. She likes to wave at passing boats, inviting 120 volts to raise their sails.

Words unbosomed -- her attempt of blotting out the sun and those bloodletting habits.

Her eyelids say, "Only the disquieting muses have time for me." So she writes like an umbrella, shading reality; remembering pluck and luck stories about bumblebees, lovingly wrapped in Tiffany-blue ribbon and paper.

Father used to solve her every contemplation. Now indecisiveness in what she asks. Now indecisiveness in arbitrary tasks.

And she and her negative capability are the last two awake at a slumber party, giving commonplace words the allure of secrecy.

You see, she is only harmless when she sleeps.
~