Approach to Sleep
“These are not directives of nihilism and despair.
In negative decibels, in intangible density, rejoice.
To mitigate this pain you must massage the void.
Emptiness is an erogenous zone, a collapsed star,
black with absence and oxytocin.”
“[L]ove is a law
and hell is a place.”
“the linoleum shines so bright
i can see my foot take each step, the bottom of the shoe descend
to its reflection until the soles kiss and merge, their dark lengths
pressed together without a molecule of air between them.”
O rigin-story teller in the
kiln of my skin,
smouldering heat-on-istic, a song
followed into dark, am
I the colourization or
the restoration? 4K or
a yet-to-be-discovered iteration of
an innovation? In the
fizzling itch of electric
ashes, a hum at
home in the hollow
bone, the muted marrow,
of a tree that
will not flower to
fullness of leaf, its
heat leaks, ripples wreathing
rhymes along its corridors
of grief, a song
reflecting the sun’s fire:
I want your resistance
to hold me back…
a voice like the
snapping of bones, how
what I don’t know
about you erodes, the
more what I want
to grows toward the
scent of truth, glows,
explodes, giving new voice
to old concerns, trust
my future to voices
in the æther, black
wings beating at the
light, filled with a
blind wish which wasn’t
even mine to begin
with picking at the
red seam, blood-glow letting
out its letting go,
from below the grinning
grotto an enlightened age
with dark edges, did
you lose faith in
us or interest? Lungs
burn after kissing a
dead poet, love like
an arrow without a
target, snow angels before
the blizzard ends, don’t
be deceived: pain is
the most accurate mirror
you can believe, the
way we address our
Selves in empty rooms
an oasis in the
ashes, a backward path
to heaven left to
let you know how
alone you never were
to begin with, now
that our end afterimages
its approach to sleep.
