Water

Cold, ragged light shines
on cluster of purple bees.
Over the construction line,
bullet holes in the leaves.

Tide of vermillion leaves
stains with irreversible shine,
has no business with bees.
Makes apparent horizon line.

Enough imperial pipeline.
Tents collapse under leaves,
collecting pools of moon's shine,
sea of anesthesia for bees.

Partake of me, wild bees.
Deposit beneath the pipeline
fodder for sun-powdered leaves,
stick it where cameras don't shine.

Friend A Will Be My Accompanist

Leaves are seized by wind,
mark of autumn’s denouement.
Wonder if my words will reach

when they only seem to float away,
hoping their intricate weight translates.
Daffodils emerge in the margins.

Your signature runs with the rain,
trailing ink like a black-sea firework.
I am so close to speaking again.

Cataracts stick to sheet music,
curtain falls — thick, stagnant chord.
Symphony of grim telegnostic

pleads: never end.
In the empty space, words corral
into place like cold black keys,

flooding the breach — 
fingers pluck stems
reaching down into graves.

This is what flies
from my piano,
so many fugitive shades.

bell

sound you make so immaculate

your intimate trembling terror i love

light caught in my crosshairs sneezing

out of control clutching concern

abandoning aesthetic retention

only the outlines exhale palettes

of pleasure snowing october

potpourri of iridescent sound

You Some Kind of Holographic

Refracting spectral shivers, fraying
not at the edges, with no protective

sleeve handy except memory, light
bounces gently off of knee, scatters

into giddy-up destinies, reflecting
what's best. Colossal odds never

collided with propriety. Statistics bodied
by linguistics. Peering over edge

of sleep, seeing ocean-swept rays
steer the ship transporting volatile

fate, never guaranteed or even likely.
Adrift for days wondering how cells

were compelled to meet at the rendezvous,
establishing you. This sort of rarified

grace topples insufficient recollection,
your limited-edition visage defies

collection, make no mistake my intentions,
though scattered and unsure, reconvene

to craft this hieroglyphical mirror
cracked with the colors of my eyes,

so you might see how dazzling, elegantly
distorted, how disarmingly radiant

your vessel, a-flutter with sky-glitter,
your smile a window through rainbow.

Indifference

Indifferent
forces
never
abandon
you—
yeh,
they
never
even
start.

My Horses

I can only assume the horses died well,
considering the smoke coming from the stable,
and the smell of charred leather. Branches point
toward the distance, where the graveyard grass
recedes. Early-song dew dampens my hair
while voices laugh deep inside the mine.

The horses were never mine.
I drink, keeping down sediments from the well
for my iron deficiency. I spit out hair
that winds up in my mouth, feigning stable
trajectory and lying in the grass
once the sun has set behind the mountain’s point.

A sign with chipped paint points
up ahead, where a great stone blocks the mine.
Red deltas course slowly through the grass,
spilling downhill and filling up the well.
A rose-ring on a finger-stem— ashes, ashes in the stable.
My devastation kept prisoner by hair.

I dreamt I was drowning in a stream of hair.
The torched straw was melted down to a point,
and in that chamber I found that stable
was just a garment, a spectacle of mine,
an infantile thought raised so well.
I dreamt I was swimming in a sea of red grass.

Slit your tongue with a blade of grass,
stem the bleeding with a mop of horse-hair.
I hoped we might ride together, but knew well
that one of us would be sidestepping the final point—
nothing ever leaves or enters the mine.
Desire burned up with the stable.

I see no reason to build another stable
for things that ought to be free, tearing up grass,
galloping, galloping far from whatever’s mine.
Like a fatal sunset, I saw your hair
go up in smoke, extinguishing the point
with darkness, rupturing the well.

Thoughts sprout like grass beneath hair,
never straight, stable or quick to the point.
I mine the air for hints that I am well.

The Once and Future Dayspring

V.

The way it is— we are too weak to save anything.

The way it's been all this time,
despite visions lodged in honeycomb memory...

The way it's gone,
we spent so much time in our headship
we quit charting the constellations
and grew used to navigating by our names.

What fool ever fell in love with a game?

Swirling green and gold catching quick
on the globe, Dayspring, Dayspring,
creating a new circumference,
never catching on to the difference.

To love that, the way it is— Dayspring—
always witness to the rise of some fallen thing.

Powerless to row back against ceaseless resistance.
Powerless to preserve any kiss.
Powerless to defend the squishy bodies of them I love.
Powerless to freeze my wishes in the menagerie.
Powerless to do without, without, without.
Powerless to magick kindness out of malice.
Powerless to stop the tar from bubbling.
Powerless to go where day demands nothing.
Powerless to reverse cuts glimpsed on skin.
Powerless to will the wheeling needle backwards.
Powerless to rally nerves out of nervousness.
Powerless to numb my sex senseless.
Powerless to bandage the gilded bleeding of fate.
Powerless to intervene in my parent's meeting.

Powerless to stop them from committing the far-reaching accident of creating me.

The Once and Future Dayspring

IV.

Tough if not impossible
to determine when
sex, sex, sex,
graduated from word—
sensual, abysmal sex—
to become world.

Tough to suss out
the use, the trial and error
of thought refuse.

The way it is,
we discover by feeling
without impulse to
duck or cover,
evading biological bombs.

Bombs!
They malign the surface,
unraveling in kind.
No one cares for their origin.
They bow, and blow up,
disseminating destinies
and popping brain bubble.
Does despair
deserve your attention now?

I dig deep
for the memory of when
blank became buck,
where beyond the touch
was another touch,
and behind the intrepid smile
another smile just as intrepid,
and livid licking of the lips,
what head-spin, what world
was I getting involved in?

Fire! For fuck's sake
you keep standing in fire,
your vision tunneling
deeper than the canals
of my crumbling capital.
You like the pain, 

the dwindling of your vitality,
you watch your life drain
and wait for someone
to join your party.

The Once and Future Dayspring

III.

To go with the team,
that is the charge and privilege
of the modern gladiator.

To make murder
mercurial, to wring out time
and bottle it.

To surprise
with freshly-caught calculations
in canopy shadow.

To repurpose
my neuroses, drenched
in deep-sea music.

To pluck
the hunter's bow and hear
laughing.

To continue
the poem viciously cycling,
until rest rents you.

To delight
fingers for dance and eyes
for devour.

To forge
a funneling crater deep
into throbbing skull.

To gain
velocity, intensity, ferocity,
in installments of blunders.

To lose
no what, no why, but who,
and what reason to quit?

Dayspring—

To never wasting,
relenting or turning around.
To go ahead, instead.

Taking Names

Upstairs, downstairs,
I go where
the word finds voice.

I go where
our impending choice
has not disseminated:

unknown, uninitiated,
undeterred, unswayable,
unremarkable, unbreakable.

The Once and Future Dayspring

II.

Sequester blood pressure inexorably rising.
Procure battle-pillows for propping the throne.
Ensure hydration levels are, and stay, prime.
Rally the banners— who will answer the call?
Appropriate the space.
Orchestrate strategy as befits the mood.
If there's time, scarf down some food.
Better smoke up or you're just not there.
Select soundtrack as befits the strategy.
Rest hands on keys, begin connecting tissue.
Wake up with click, click, click, clacking.

Dayspring: to rise, unsettled and aching.
Tower of lean-on-me, forfeiting sanity
in the name of tight-breathed security.
Skewered by beams of the ferris wheel,
swirling green and gold, forgetting what's real.

Declaration of Grievances

            When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one student to adhere to the constraints of their course and write something beyond reckoning, a decent respect to the academic institution that facilitates such untenable opinions requires that they should declare the cause which impels them to such conclusions.

Now, let's refrain from moving any farther. This much distance, at least, is strongly recommended. I have some things to say, some of which you have no doubt heard, though shaded by undetectable layers of distortion. I will not be announcing which distortions I have removed and which I have doubled-down on— that is for others to mettle through. I also will not divulge the choreography of the contortions I have gone through to reach this vantage point. The elegance of my confidence would rip apart like wet tissue paper if you were privy to my philosophical playbook. That said, here is the play.

            We killed the planet. It's over. The arrangements we make now, if we make any at all, will end up being kitschy little touches at the Earth's wake. A bouquet of rotten fruit. Desiccated petals stuck to the window. A piano in shambles, playing the same slow, low note, over and over. You see what I mean. It would be rude to walk away, though, considering our implication in the murder. Turning our back at this point would be the least effective hit n' run in history. We made our maggot-infested bed. Now we get to die in it.

            The wealthy won— we lost. Though in certain ways, it's never been more fun to be losing. Look, there's nothing I hate more than mopping floors and wrapping silverware and running the dishwasher for hours, powerless to walk out the stupidly heavy door I watch customers struggle to get through all day, defenseless against the onslaught of power-trip marching orders from my green-bean-brain manager. All for money that belongs to me in name only. What little cash I deem appropriate for leisure I feel guilty spending. The rest is swept through the irredeemable machine.

            When we let the masters regulate the regulators, we were finished. This is not an indictment of those who tried. We have to sleep sometime. They never sleep. Or, at least, the air is so tight up there at the top that they must rest very carefully, in shifts, else they slip into a sleep so heavy they cease breathing. When the people rise and smash together in a valiant attempt to say enough, the masters need only wait until the dancing and yelling and unifying is spent, and the bulk of the protest limps home to plummet into their beds. Then the shadowy hand descends to disperse the remaining opposition, just in time for brunch.

            Now I shift to directly address the masters, the elite, the much-grumbled about 1%: despite my accrued knowledge of your supremacist agenda, and my personal experience with the aftershocks of your carelessness, and hearing the stories of others suffering far worse than I ever could— I'm still on your side, idiots. Do you know how much I despise defending banks? I don't sound cool or empathetic when I feel obligated to point out that bailing out the banks was better than the alternative— letting them suffer their mistakes and damaging the rest of us with them. I don't feel hip when I feel the need to say that the banks paid back the monstrous loan within a year. How did I get stuck holding this bag?

            It is my penchant for pleasing everyone that puts me at this moral disadvantage. Somehow, even though the Supreme Court decided decades ago that money is speech, the silence from the wealthiest sliver of society is deafening. Defend yourselves, fuckheads. I won't occupy this middle ground forever. At some point I'm going to have to pick a side, and considering my practice, I have a good idea which side of the divide that'll be. You destroy the earth, abuse the legislative body, shore up your excess, cover for your atrocities, hire the slickest accountants, prey upon the despairing poor, turn them against their neighbors, and the whole way got help from folks like me who were foolish enough to give you the benefit of the doubt. Now the rest of us bear the brunt of the fallout.

            We doing okay. They say that world-wide— by some opaque metric of life, liberty and happiness— it's never been a better time to be alive. I want to believe. I also believe that though you may have played a role in industrializing pockets of extreme poverty that lag the whole globe over, you are barred from earning any credit. We know that “improving lives” was a minor bonus, at best. In the worst light, you saved some souls from fortunately-quick deaths and dragged their existences out into a full three acts of sweat, salt and blood. You get no credit for lifting the poverty line a couple inches while your statement stacks zeroes like pancakes. Cordoning yourself off from the rest of us has probably eased your conscience, but it has cemented your legacy as the Loki of American mythology. You burned us, you tricked us, you spun a massive, flimsy web for the whole world to wriggle in. The world continues to get warmer, and our futures look dimmer all the time.

            Seems I cut out the surplus, the middle layer, the establishment that has been much lambasted this election cycle, and gone straight to the top to address the masters of society who I'm sure will receive the message. IF, and this is a big if, you want the world to improve— not just for yourselves, because I know that in your lives, too, there is room for improvement— ya gotta stop acting like you're not there. 'Cause the people see you, and are starting to catch on to all that you've done to keep "the world like it is"— to use the words of Amiri Baraka. The only reason I even put myself through the embarrassment of defending your theoretical humanity is because you lack the courtesy to speak for yourself. And I have a ghastly defect that beckons me to speak on behalf of those who remain silent. Even for souls who have succumbed to the disease of greed— because if lack of money has made me generous, I can see that having it would make me vile. Tell me. When our Founders seceded from the tyrannical King, and pledged to each other their lives, their fortunes, and their honor, do you think of that as the prelude to your reign? 
Should we animate the blood of our rebel ancestors, and stop at nothing to kill you?

Reality Check

Jumped on the JUMP,
my driver with downcast eyes
slumping out of his seat,
seemed surprised to see me.
Asked to see my bus pass.

I settled in to watch him.
We both stared
at his hands, a bit trembling,
and my imagination took off:

Is this to be our last ride?
Does the driver have what it takes
to deliver us safely,
or is this checkmate?

The bus shuttered, putt-putt
for starters, 'till my driver
stuttered away from the curb,
and we were off, bumbling
with the rough n' tumble of the
JUMP, through the countryside
for old men, gliding over speed
bumps with cautious grace,
as if he either heard my concern,
or simply valued our lives—

I busied myself
with the swirling routine
of counting rocks, difficult,
then switched to leaves, difficult,
'till at last I settled on trees,
just enough of them to carry
my attention in their soon-stripped
arms.

For my driver, a STOP sign reads:

Slow down indefinitely,
Till you reach an
Opening in the
Penumbra,

and ONLY then— he resumes.

I enjoy the view out the window
as if it were my rolling credits.
The clouds loom
like unconquerable continents.
The white billows
behind the mountains
like the fanned-out feathers
of an albino peacock.
The crook of the dominant peak
sees a bus inching its way
down the wheat-flanked highway.

Brown and white
sheep graze in the field,
frozen, content, ornately
arranged like the surviving
pieces of a chess game.
There's a checkmate
everywhere you look.

The Once And Future Dayspring

I.

They thought it was a phase.
Thought, hey, maybe one of these days

they'd bring themselves back to their bodies

for good.

We thought it clear
that we live and die by our names,

that we stamp out the darkness
by playing.

My name is Dayspring.

Twenty-three years old,
in near-perfect health.

Yet thousands of deaths.

Sharp, thunderous thousands,
thousands with no hyperbole.

O commendable thousands sing
elastic mortality of Dayspring.

Dead hoisting the flag at Warsong.
Dead with tea at the twenty-fifth hour.
Dead sun-struck through fog of war.

Dead crying on the bathroom floor.
Dead for my transgressions on Tarren Mill.

Laid to waste by cloak n' dagger death.
Dead trembling in the resurrection well.
Dead protecting them who would carry me.
Dead loving them who would carry me.
Dead to those who've no proof otherwise.
Dead falling from the water of Skettis.
Dead with haste which breeds mistakes.

Impressed with how dead.
Dead condensing the bad into past.
Dead at the outset of yet another conquest.

Dead escaping my murderous shadow.
Jumped dead by the well-prepared horde.
Discovered dead at the thirty-sixth hour.
Pressing on dead despite fleeing particles.
Dead at sea sunk from the pressure.
Dead destroyed by banks of the river.
Dead kneeling beneath trees of Ashenvale.
In blessed ecstasy dead though who can tell.
Inevitable, indelible death.

Head Over Water

Enough scales tipping,
flecking, sparkling
through the dark.

Enough petty insults,
enough grandstanding
and carnival barking.

Let documents bind.
Let us keep Yemen
in mind.

No one
uses their illusions
for any mirage
but the unlikely
conglomerate
of identity
that is
democracy.

World watches.
We watch back.

Blank Canvass

Slipped disks
between fuzzy
asterisks, grinning:
blinking in disbelief
from a sudden
swivel toward
difference.

Fuss over blueprints,
concern for earnings,
all second-rate worries
grating in the dark.

What achieve?
Who undone the udon?

How blank the canvass?

Insecurities masked
by safety-net attempt.
At least you tried, right?
After finding that
sitting on your hands
cuts circulation
to your conscience.

Reserve

My lips buzz,
a bee nearly entering
the pink, yellow & white
of my open mouth.
The bulldozer
vibrates in the valley.
I cannot stay.

Lone spider
advancing—help
horizon descend
so it can climb
fearless.
Silk surpasses.
I cannot stay.

Swarm
of adulation
gathers odor thick
with sun-clusters.
The gates seal
their lips at sunset.
I cannot stay.

(public disservice announcement)

is what this won't be called,
the title slated to be replaced
at the outset. I search for
sediments and impediments
beneath the gravel exterior,
feeling superior, enough.

Not another sound,
lest you suggest
that I start the poem over.

We're in this now,
so listen.

The title, never part
of the show as strives
to be. Looking in.
From the top on down.
Keeping up.
Sticking around.






















Oh,
thought we were finished.
Well,
it's over
it's over
it's over
now. Good riddance!

Warbler

Never got to decorate

your shrine, plaster
polaroids of you smiling
on pink spider-string,
stuff so strong it holds
your drink while you
attempt that routine
you've been practicing,

where you tight-rope
across my puffed-out
chest.

I'm no designer of interiors
or explorer of frontiers.
Not one speck an exception
to pursuit's golden rule.

Just a peckish red warbler

yodeling to the great blue,
treating the vast resplendence
the way I would treat you.

SPEL FOR BODY

Oh god, body.
              Oh, god body.
Body of ghost.
                             Most godlike body.
              My body most godly.
              My ghost, no body.
                            Nobody's been god.
                            Nobody's got body.
                                        No one's been body.
         Body me.
                                                    Body god.
Body blame god daily.
         Body say good golly.
         Body brave some body.

Some body gave god.
                                                               Some body got ghost.
Some brave's a body.
          Some body bathe.
                     Some body never laid.
Some depraved body.

           
                                                            Body up on auction.

                                                            Body broke with sickness.


                    Body brave god.
                          Body goads response.
                                   Body stuck in quandary.
                          Body count days.
                    Body slick with malaise.

                                             
                                      What body but your own?
What ghost got body sewn?  
                         What sees with body?
               Who tries to be some body?
                                     What body question effect?
                                     What body display defects?
Who markets body?          

   
                                                                            Who dispute that soul be body?





Let go banal pursuit body!

                                             

                                                               Let lie grumbling crooked body!



                                Let drag tongue body!




                Let play on ribs body!




                                                    Let voice existence body!




                       Let sweat coat stifling body!




                                                    Let steam nettle body!




                 Let fly copious body!


                 
                                                                   Let determine body!



                                   Let slack sour body!



                                                                                      Let filth body!



     Let love lock body—

Will you be my Vice-President?

Will you speak for me when I am gone?
Will you walk with me astride the wharf?
Will you shore up my heart’s coalition?
Will you store my passwords in your pocketbook?
Will you tease and hint at your future without me?
Will you lend me a taste of your credibility?
Will you ease me through this metamorphosis?
Will you honor more than my policies?
Will you gush about me when you are tipsy?
Will you reach for my hand on the tarmac?
Will you water the plants when I am away?
Will you attach your name to mine so that we will never again be the same?

best things

The best things
said to me
are the hints

that keep me
going,
not too different

from the way
a con-man
is kept going

by the thrill
of previously
successful cons.

Been here all this time

Light

drips down

the window-well,

portends
a little peace.
Conflict

carries no
ID. No

flinching.

Parsing
my recklessness, 

I shave

every time
I swivel my
sight toward 

the window. 

My hope-

sprinkled

projects gorge.

Gelatinous
cage-lining.

My just
desserts,
deserting me.

Subluxation

I enter the office in my pajamas,
under the weather and undeterred.
My chiropractor, swift spirited,
usually smiling, crosses the dividing
curtain into the Body room, where
my body slumps over the table.
An "adjust-mint" slides around
beneath my tongue.

He quickly assured me that, yes,
I've pinched some nerves over
the years, but that it's time to let
some of the pain go. He held me
expertly, and with a sudden spasm
my spine crunched like a bag of
kettle chips.  

Oh man, he says, how were you
living with that? Genuinely, it
seemed, even knowing he says that
to everybody. I had grown used
to pain, an ache long absorbed,
and indeed, I felt better. But
when he said, Now you'll
start to feel happy,

I nearly burst with laughter.

Ambassador

I vacuum the company rug—

witness the couple
in the cozy booth
garnish their meal
with a kiss—

and feel that I could
use a hug.

Sick Day

Orange goo
packed inside capsules
meant for solving,
or, distilling the sickness
into a bite-sized,
sideshow distraction.

Phooey.
I accept rest,
but cannot
accept a lull 

in my skull's 

lullaby.

I would drink
a bottle of lotion
to skip prying
the clam
with casual
fingers and land
straight
on the tongue
of the pearl.

Before The Fall

Lion! Your mane is matted red,
you've gone and mussed it up again.

Anglerfish! You are spinning circles
chasing the bob of light between your eyes.

Human! You lack the filter to decipher
what's room-ready, what's mood-groomed,

you scratch your scalp and stick out your
tongue, always the amused one, pickling

yourself in mine. Look at you, loaded
and game-faced, crooning a crooked

song to flow through those who look
for their princess in the fortress—

not comprehending brick as brick
is, mortar as clinging together,

facade of it scuffed with tartar.
Human... you fall through the same

crevasse, wide enough for two,
until you learn that flossing gets you

one blood-letting closer to the kingdom.
Always the intentional alternative,

again the move as antidote for sinking,
the perfect, the exact, the inevitable next,

the dulcet modes of persisting.  
Like sparklers spitting as you roll,

human, you cling to your twin signifiers:
honesty, and what comes before the fall.

The Ballad of Dave and Sally

Post-isolation, Dave met his match—
Sally was grateful for someone to latch .
They said some things quite publicly
and together scrounged for property.

Promising their fervid testimonial
would not descend into a chimerical
quest, they agreed that they would raise
the best and lavish them genuine praise.

What you take beyond costs nothing,
though to remain you must make a living.
They held cabinet meetings over how to eat
while the kids belched Olly Olly Oxen Free!

Finicky months passed, fingers grew long
and the sustenance kept down.
This did not assuage Dave's concern
that the happy wage could not be earned.

A sea of books, or digital sprawl:
He felt that they should have it all.
He strove to win the intra-marital war
of I love you more, I love you more. 

Sally trusted him—the less they said,
the more doubt swelled inside Dave's head.
‘Till he quietly took out an insurance policy
that grew quite popular in the 21st century.

Purpose twists and beckons.
Dave slipped and, relieving his pension,
snapped his neck on their wooden fence.
The family lived off the interest.

rug sale

I browsed the bizarre stall
after getting my bones seen,

and touched the green,
blue and crimson patterns,
the shredded tassels
of bourgeois ground
obfuscators,

and thought of the life
we would one day have
to drop $700 simply
to have an art piece
we could walk on.

The songs we like don't make us cry

or— we cry our lives
out— no compromise.
No composition
of sunrise to whet
the spirit, or
daisy-chain of dimples
to admire— no.
We harden:
iron hand in iron
hand, hanging
our sanity
on scalding wire
as if hope's retaliation,
getting our digs

dug in.
I may be wrong—
each song grips
us falling, untwisting
the root crafts cause
for continuing.
But the songs we like
don't make us cry—
they empty us of leaving.

nurse's notes

September 15, 9:15am

Patient is pulled from the lobby, after just three deflating

           minutes overhearing the front desk at the family clinic,

Patient is shepherded through the hall of the drained aquarium.
Patient says thank you for the hope you must carry.
Patient throws a dirty look at the sharp-shooting scale.
Patient wrings his hands like rags left too long in the sink.
Patient learns that the doctor is running behind, that some patients
            are more difficult than others.
Patient says it's good to get some answers.
Patient's legs are wrapped around each other like Jack's beanstalk.
Patient plays patty-cake to keep from shaking.
Patient wishes he hadn't sprung for the second cup.
When asked about sexual activity, he asks what counts.
Patient fills out the form as accurately as he can.

Doctor enters and reads the history of this stranger,
Stranger patiently waits for him to catch up.
Doctor says, explain this part.
Patient senses his own blood in the water.

Patient articulates the guilt of wanting to die,
              tension between a life of ease and the dark patches of days,
Patient remarks that you cannot see darkness if it arrives without approaching,
              wonders when it all got so heavy, and useless, and lean,
his voice dropping when recalling how bad it could get,
              when the days would sink unfathomably deep,
when extra-creative thoughts grew appendages to carry out their mission and crossed the boundary                     into nearly real end-of-it-all planning,
when the only thing holding it back was the logistical nightmare of how to make it look like an                          accident, as if that would smooth the shock of going,
         when by 3pm life was only botched pixels and the porcelain holding cell,
Patient admits to being no good at asking for help, finds struggling alone to be a certain kind of             irresistible, but when he could no longer resist wanting to die, he turned to his best friend and cried,
confessing he could never really hate himself, but that loving himself makes it worse,
Patient doesn't drink anymore after that night, for fear of waking the slumbering architect of his death,
as of last week doesn't smoke any more cigarettes, and knows his chemicals cannot possibly keep up,
smokes a bit of weed at the end of each day, worried what will become of him if he doesn't have                   something, but not really desiring anything,
briefly complains that everything he owns is breaking, his computer kaput, phone's got a mind of its own, has a hole in his underwear the size of, well, you know...
notes that once you've seen the hole, and known the hole, and held the hole close while falling asleep,           you start to notice the movements— the kicking, stretching, tightening— that ripped the hole            into existence, one torn thread after another,
Patient had a dream last night that his Father showed up with his nomadic crew of eleven, and while                  they all went to sleep in the basement, Father set up his sleeping bag right next to mine, fixing         the TV to max volume to make sure that neither of us would be getting any sleep,
and woke up in the dark missing him, missing him, missing him.

Patient carries a history that cannot be put down,
and schedules an appointment for November,
says I'll be around.