Another Instance of Closing Your Eyes

Dreamcatchers? No need.
We've plundered a sick
Manual from the dives we've taken

titled
Dream Symposium III:
What to Do

Once You're Down There.
We were waiting for the tenth hour
to diminish itself

when the abrupt, familiar longing
for the following morning
worked its way down my spine...

Or was that Up?
The way wreckage looks so
Peaceful

after a storm:
I had that in mind.
The long, dark hall

ahead of me
made me a bit of a
hamster, hilariously

without reprieve.
I flip through the Manual,
unsure... where it ends or starts,

for starters. Holographic aids
beside jealous limericks,
forlorn games of X' and O's.

Despite
the whispered urging in my ear,
I am unable to locate a legend

for this sort of map... the key
was in the tree,
but that tree got hacked...

there is no hope in searching for paths.
I have become
somewhat

of a pathological
path hunter.
Underneath the bridge buckled with locks, 

the river runs dry
and twists into steel,
moving shit

from one end
of the country
to the other.

It looked familiar,
the clutter of irony. Like
sizzling snowflakes on my tongue

while the smoke encroaches,
glittering... killing us
glittering.

We know what's across the
tracks: ringing
at every hour of the day.

That must be why we dwell here,
instead of where there's endless ringing.
How could you live with it?

I left the manual on the bridge,
where the distant orange haze
of Minneapolis will bathe it.

In the morning,
will it be
Dream Symposium IV: ???

Out of another paper crypt,
the story of a man and woman
told as if it was the first

lodged in my throat.
I cried a little
because I saw—I could see

in the stir of moods
and knew from those words
that the man was me.

The cracks in my voice
are entirely forced
and for theatrical benefit.

The rug and the ottoman
and the radical electric fungus
growing on every piece of furniture

is for the benefit of my soul.
I rise from the sea confused,
feeling quite bad

behind my knees.
The crunch of the ice
as I wander

will be the song that plays
for when I am lowered
into my freshly snowed over grave.

I was once known as Dad

You needed
three hundred and fifty
dollars because she
was shitting blood,
and though I have
three hundred
and fifty three dollars
in my bank account,
it hurts that I cannot help.

Through Sleepy Glass

The dial is set to devour.
I am amassing a swarm
of blanket folds,
twisting like a shark
thrashing with love.
The pedestal is freezing.
My socks reverse-copulate,
dying off in pairs,
they vanish into cracks.
Lately getting sad
has been a sort of amusement,
like the sleeping lion at the zoo.
I watch myself slumber,
wondering if the only
time he comes to life
is when the zookeepers
go home to their wives,
boyfriends, whatever.

Lost in the Sea of Darkness

It's so bad. It's so bad.

I'm sorry. It's so bad.

I wish I could take it all back.

I come to,

standing soaked

a few feet

from where I stood

just before.

The world melts

like Dali.

I've become 

waxen waste,

I am what drips

from the flame.

My eyes fully opened

refused to bring anything

else in. My skin

looked like the inside

of a clam.

I was gone a while.

I am still returning.

The darkness pervades

every corner of my life.

How will I ever forget—

You fucking fool,

you think you master me?

I am the sea of darkness,

I am the end of your days,

and the next time we meet

you will swim alone for eternity.

clutch sentry mission log

i am clutching the handle

of the toilet seat keeping

watch over the imbibers
of numberless remedies

not a spot on the coffee table
gives itself up to the ash marshes

that overtake the checkered oak

i spy a little complacency

fortunately no one has ever
known the interior of a good time
we slip into the cracked skin
of the situations that somehow

we keep finding ourselves in

my defenses are crumbling

damn the water damage
fixing my fidgety flame

as the steady mind-drum

beats to the munching of melted
snow i think of the commander
the great fiery father Ra

i want to partake in the puddle
strip my heart of its galoshes
and let a little wet in
but i hold strong to withholding

and cannot shake the notion
that if i was told i had three
days left i believe i could
get everything done on time

Set To Fly

A kiss chiseled out of a whisper.
Long looks at the ceiling fan.
Spokes of hard light spinning.
Hard games melt away.
The bard's triumph is attention.
The rug is a lovely runway.
Lots of elevation going on.
Many, many mires to admire.
Bags of misunderstood magic.
Three illuminated bar signs.
The smoke of sunrise swirling.
The arrival of the great caravel.
Waves of conclusion wash over us.
A kiss imprinted on the hand.
Observing the great going-under
into a world unseen, an earth unearthed.
There it is.

Litmus Test for the Long Dreamer

Nearly an hour ago I woke up
clamped by sweat at the thighs,
not sure if danger was in the day's
index or not: looked up, remembered
my glass of arbor, sweet condensed
oxygen to open up the vents down
in the basement where I return to,
letting the dream seep back into me.

Had I remembered details that mattered,
these next few moments could be spent
delving back into the divine prophesy
(for anything done to me is likely a prophesy),
but I spent the first critical moments of
being awake with the urge to record
dithering between the bathroom and kitchen,
deciding the race between my bowels and coffee.

The only things I remember were laying my life
down in the pursuit of a spectre, yes, she was
the princess locked away in a power suit,
and the ferocity of her concrete-chested dragon
scared so many shits out of me. His human skin
could not conceal what I knew was within.
I ran like fire, burning down the neighborhood.

The longer this takes, the farther I run away,
and the ashes that fall over me lying in bed
no longer hold a distinguishable scent.
I cannot remember the street, the heated chase,
or even the arrangement of her face.
That is the danger of my back pages.
Who am I meant to save today?

My Coat of Many Colors

"I look handsome, I look smart, I am a walking work of art."

At the beginning of the book I lamented,
I have wasted the most glorious years of my life.
Dramatic idiocy and clueless counting of my days,
I had many dazzling gifts.
Now I drape my coat of many colors
around my intimate shoulders,
ready for the great work to emerge from the haze,
having seen the river at a time that truly matters.

Each poem is a person
and each person is a poem.
I cannot figure out how something so simple
has escaped me so long.
I would have probably worried less.

To realize that nothing is finished,
that anything can fluctuate
between being a beautiful mess
and a pool of words with no meaning.
I build encouragement out of loose parts.

I weigh immortality with my own scale.
I build the public road as I go.

Propulsion

The uncountable miracles,
we are starting to count them.
Our apartment is littered with abaci
and aching remnants of a great rest.
Each day we re-adjust the blinds,
searching and researching
for the exact angle of the arms
of the clock it takes for a slant
of sunlight to sear the canals
of our blood vessels.
We have been trying to keep the floor level.
We have been crowding the lifeboat
to increase our chances of being seen
by the errant ship that will
veer towards us with a rescuing spirit.
See each of their faces fall as we tell them,
Sorry for wasting your time, folks,
but we're fine just where we are.
Keeping watch through the lazy eye
in the door, I spy the fragrant vacancy
of dumb talkers and empty listeners.
Take a deep breath in.
You could smell it too.

Solarium

Warm passageway,
the comfort you bring me surpasses the brilliance of the sunshine,
the solace you bring this Sunday echoes in the back pages of my memory book,
my source of brilliance,
my sunshine of solace,
my passageway to the wild, warm firing range in the basement of the woods,
wouldn't you like to know what it's like to hold a wild creature of unimaginable imagination,
the sunshine of the woods, the comfort of the back pages of the woods,
imagination the basement, wild and rampant with emblems,
brilliance mingling with the sinister and familiar,
breeding brew and brawl, shock and awe,
imagination growing strong like an unfathomable creature in the basement of the woods,
where the shots of the firing range can be heard from the back pages of the burrow
and reverberate off the stained-glass ceiling of the solarium,
where the neighbors gather every Sunday to harvest good feelings for the coming week,
to lay down their pettiness and stubbornness, exchanging it for comfort and good will,
to observe the woods thicken and throw wild moods,
and against the odds of the storm bet their lives that everything will remain standing.

Shades At Your Back

I wake playing my part, great or small.

I wake obsessed with the drop-off, 

marred by the merchant of ecstasy,

still only slightly sweaty.

The prophet I had slipped into being

now wanders lost in the dark 

compartmental chambers

of the skull hospital.

My senses can really take a beating.

I can smell my synapses sizzling

and grin like it's bacon in the morning.

The weight of my worries

has bottomed out: only trimming

our defeats off like frilly furls

will turn the room back around.

We greet the sun that rises

off the hot breath of regret,

and hides behind shields

of crystalline vapor

as it slowly creeps

toward the sinking line.

Disarming alarm of my body,

I think I am going to lay you to rest.
Your potential has been portioned
and tucked away behind shades.
Your reign has been cut too late.