TWO

  • Me, alone is always contrary. Please

    leave me alone.

    Please give me rest. But please

    please, please, don’t

    banish me-

    all

    the way

    to myself.

    That din unending in rabid vigil, it

    loops and stirs and

    loops

    fermenting infection

    cementing mistaken,

    askew, fantastically amiss

    tales.

    Then tortured by a torrid famine from

    a self infrangible and firm

    I gasp for my name.

  • Denizens of the night, unite!

    The implacable coterie of

    round the clock wakers,

    who shake the dark hours

    with mind bending

    tunnels. Clandestine wanderers

    of witching hours—

    congregate to the place

    where sundials expire

    and behold the throng

    of your kind.

    Nourish inside all the

    black nodes and be relieved

    and worship free,

    free from speaking only

    that which passes in the

    light. Know the diurnal life

    is only half.

    While those eyes, eyes

    resisting rest, expand

    the given hours and sit

    upon the whole— the

    compound truth,

    be it full of sores, is fuller still—

    Of breath and death,

    above and below,

    the effusive day with

    our elucidative night.

  • It came to pass

    it must always be coming to pass every

    minute you are inhaling you must bring

    much good to pass more more

    more you must bring your more to pass

    to be good

    there is no more— yet your

    limbs are in perfunctory stasis

    while your heart is in starvation

    your hollow more takes away more

    than it contributes and

    the thing in its path cannot be filled

    by you or through you because

    your empty inner knows only paucity

    not peace

    and you come inside and find

    your trough is bare and

    sometimes filled with glossy tacky

    wounds open and unmoored still

    canker the pus fermenting

    so the feeble air you

    ooze is not more—

    just your ill exhale

    the only real more to give

    to the passer the one who sits by you

    is not a performance—it is bellowing

    below—an inherent fulgid flame

    requiring quiet still corridors so it remains

    lit and unswayed and then it thaws you

    and bestows more— your calm to pass.

  • Moon shadows are the most

    terrifying sort

    they double

    sometimes triple in front of you

    crossing paths

    I run to outrun the

    stolid phantoms they

    float on ahead

    and laugh

    those sanguine fish-less fishermen

    in carny waltz home

    own early drunken

    hours they saunter tilt

    sway collide

    and soon

    you come to admit

    this whole bitter time

    you are the one chasing

    your very own shadows

    so come morning before

    bright I lace up again and

    though I pray

    I strain harder—

    the spirits win they

    `remain

    just racing faster into

    what is trapped what

    is already passed something

    in this black cycle isn’t whole

    I run to fill holes to

    make right what went

    wrong and rescue

    all it was

    that brought me here to

    this enervating loop de

    loop

    de loop

    I wake up for another round

    I get up

    this morning I clear my

    stale throat

    this morning there is a new moon

    no moon

    no shady troupe about

    I never do this but

    this time I change

    my old route

    just to test the dark ghosts who

    I can hear the

    adumbration of though

    I can’t conceive ahead

    so I look back

    and so far back

    those

    shadows can’t

    keep

    pace

Photo by Carly Red

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