I wanted to write about
The first
Time I saw a spotlight
And knew what it meant
It was in a theater
And
Smoke machines blew
The light into existence a light
I had never seen before the spotlights
They circled cut paths I couldn’t
Follow
Define
Shining through the smoke
Light made color made smoke made real
It wasn’t the light I saw it was the smoke spotlit but it was
Only the light I knew
Saw
Could see
Until I thought of driving
Home
Late one night in the front seat and falling asleep
As our headlights cut through the fog
And knowing if I could just
Crawl through the window and
Sit on the hood of the
Car and reach out my foot and stand
on the fog-beam I would
Be carried somewhere more comfortable than the
One crick-necked nook
I had found that would
Let me fall asleep dreaming of
Crawling through windows. I wanted
To write about that first time,
When I watched the spotlights draw symbols
A cuneiform language only the smoke could read and how the
Smoke danced and I realized
The only way to shine is to be
So
Small
That you cannot cast a shadow,
That everything casts a shadow that
To shine you must block something else from shining
Because we are not suns
We are not
We are small and
Lonely
moons.
But what if we were so small we didn’t have to be?
We could be dust and smoke and
The light could dance through us
Together
And we would dance through it
And bring it to life
Write in a language only
We can read as we swim through ourselves
Ourselves the light we’re swimming through
Light is only light until it hits the dust
The dust makes the beam
Be small with me and build beams of light in a small theater
Hall where the dust has
Collected where
We have collected
Ourselves.
That is what I wanted to write
About but as I watched the
Beams moving
And learned the smoke of a
Dusty theater-room
And how it dances
Even after the light leaves it,
It must, even though
I
Cannot see
It, because it is
Always ready always
Dancing when the light arrives
The dust is a beam of light
Waiting
To be built, a boat
Waiting
To breathe an ocean into
Existence and float
Through it and
Be rocked
By it and
Be
It, is
What I wanted to write about but
As I watched the beams
Moving one
Met my eye
And
The smoke vanished
And
The beam vanished
And
There was nothing
But the light
Staring at me
Ripping my shadow
Out of me and
Hurling it behind me only
For a second
An angry and
Vengeful second who are you to
Tell me that I need the dust?
You are not a sun
You are barely a moon you are
So small
So
small
And still you cast a shadow you
Take from me
Use me
Know yourself
Build your world
By me with me through me
And you sit
In this dusty theater hall
So small
And want to write
That it is dust that makes the beam?
No smoke machine could
Blow the light into
Existence what would you call
Smoke if there was no light to
Pass through it to
Light it breathe it into
Existence now
Sit
Lonely and selfish
moon
And watch the show.