The here is a furnace of touch, where body blood can be
felt from an arm’s length if we had the space,
every closed groin open, every arm pit lifted and chin raised
to grab a breath from the closing door.
Sweat dribbles temples, there’s a fanning of papers, buttons pop
and necklines rip. The natural order of touchscreen and gaze
is suspended to count just another
beat,
a pulse, a rattle.
Please – stop this braising
of flesh and baking of brains. But the heat turns.
With pain, salt runs thick through the eye.
I can not follow any sequence nor chain ideas
nor hold a moment but live, keep living, take another breath.
Do I make of this an exercise to run a desert in
thick fatigues, or crouch
in black rubber on a sun-locked shore, an enemy
imagined, daring my fluids to bubble and foam,
or a wild mind game that locks the brain in pages of
puzzle as hot sticky rain trowels my brow,
I fighting for islands in a bubbling red sea torched by flame
and gobbing pins, the spray?
Sleep, sleep, I want to sail to an ice continent
blown by my huge lids, nodding and rocking,
the clatter of metal is the flogging of canvas,
the air dizzy waves that come and go.
Sleep, sleep, there is no pulse.
This adhesive seat is vacant hell,
no thought, no thought to dwell.
I drip.