The world is a mischievous child
that I am chasing down the alleyways of old London
(or perhaps it is New York, or perhaps even
in this tricky night some place more medieval and forgotten---
someplace whose stones are scattered now and buried
where another city lives and I run through its memory)
The child is bare-chested as he peers around the corners,
plaster cracked revealing brick, his bare feet making small sounds
amidst the brick and drip.
He ages as I chase him, adolescent, glancing back at me and winking,
a plain black choker (at the perfect distance between shoulders and jaw).
But he disappears into a house which does not exist,
a place which you can only see for a moment before waking,
something a little like panic, where the roof is probably leaking,
like the terror of knowing exactly how long you have left to live,
a bushido moment in which I seem to recall seeing myself standing there
in the alley before darting around a corner and
up a stairway
_-' _-' _-' _-' _-' _-' _-' _-' _-' _-'
you paper kite, you dream without any width
damp from the sea air, miles from anyone else
in that Comfortable Hidden Nowhere
i pull on the string but you are flying
you are only in the breeze
while i dig lines in the shore
scooping pools and protecting sandhouse villages
glancing over at the buried spool
at the black dot up in the great blue
from up there we must to you seem only a pale blue dot
in a great black sea
, surely one of us is falling into a singularity
how will you survive there without
a world remembered in inches marked off your tether
as you fly out to meet the spacerocks, the satellites
, magnetic memories of dunegrass and a sun diffused by atmosphere
snowy on the edges, scrubbed over the lengths of your neurons
air is the opposite of thought, you Lord of the Winds,
you are a fool to the stage, a rough sheet of paper
in the pocket of a pink dress, a remnant of another life
not one life, a hundred lives seized you
the way fear seizes you in the morning, a sudden vertigo
( a descent into a great empty place
where the prince of darkness's father waits, imprisoned---
Hnhrenyhr the Worm-Terror creeps at night round our necks
bringing his dreams to us, using our brains' electrical system as a receiver
this is not a dream, it is an attempt to destroy a future
which should not occur )
the man felt a big burned hand grasp him
around the neck, gently. not one hand,
a hundred hands seized him, each by the next open spot of skin,
and bore him up into the sky,
the way you send out a lantern into the night,
into hundreds of little pieces
that insane close moment of a kiss at the beginning
when your soul winds up into your chest and nothing is real
you are only a glimmer in my eye at any distance
(always receeding, you photon, you river)
come here my kite, nothing is real
'-_ '-_ '-_ '-_ '-_ '-_ '-_ '-_ '-_ '-_
your veil across my eye, a glimmer in the stars