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.