Some nights
the moon throws its light
like an old man
who can't hold his liquor in
and spits blood in the morning

Someone ought to kick some sense
into me, if they did I'd hum
like the body of a fiddle

I propose we all strip down
and take a swim with my friends
the dragonflies, but no one will listen
to what I have to say when I throw my voice
like an empty bottle deep in the forest

When I think of all the dark
and swift things of my rivers,
I wonder why time the old boot -
legger hides his maps and goes
on traveling the low roads

Alone I can tell you there is so much
beside the point of the thorn of the rose
and why the moon is with me always
whenever i choose to go it alone

I drink from that blue jar of time
and breathe the breath of sweet infants

Believe you me the dead shepherd
we sent up the river in a faraway land
in a time so long ago still holds us
all by the holes in his hands

You can see the dark clouds up ahead,
my cloisters I am always walking through them
with you children of the lost dreams,
and with you fifty-something snow-headed men

We have just collided with our lost sons
on the high road of morning, we are rising
dust like the dirt on our children's graves
saying nothing to our brothers the stones.

I'm kin to the caterpillar
hidden within seasonal sac
awaiting destined identity
tucked tightly into darkness
this secret, inscrutable place

Does it know it will become
a delicate creature of beauty?
Does it know it will soon fly?

I wonder...

do I?

There is a void outside my window.
Pitch cascading into itself.
No. I am mistaken.
It is just night.
Someone was knocking on my door at some point.
Nipah. Nipah.
Nevermind.
A curious hollow groan runs through the house.
Perhaps a tap is being turned.
Hiss.
A moth catches in a stream. Wet dust clambers for existence, affirmed in the moment of death.
Sometimes it escapes.
There is a glow.
A streetlamp lights up the void, strong enough to reveal a small part of the world, but too weak to remove the grain. The noise of existence.
Blood rushes through vessels. Neurons fire.
Silence is merely the body experiencing itself. The self subverted into the other.
Oh. I have slept through the day.
A train rumbles in the distance, sonorous and bleak.
A bird cries out into the void.
Nothing responds.
A miasma blankets the city.
The choke of lack.