the following night

I. Morning

Sometimes I see mushrooms in my dreams

large and nearly white as stones,

they speak silently of rain,

and I wake up.

II. Night-time

It rained today. Almost as if

my mushroom dream was a

movement of future/prediction,

clairvoyance or wish-made-truth.

What prescience told me that

my dream meant rain, I don't know.

Because dreams mean rarely more than

despair, a muggy unknowing and

the approach of latent wakefulness,

like a sound that reaches me.

I'm so uncertain, it's a jitter

in both sides of my cage.

III. The Following Night

I've been meaning all day to say:

that Phil is moving into a trailer

in the woods. He says more

or less that he may bloom

or just decay.

I can see him there with his french-

press and meticulous sandwiches.

He's such a wonderful cook. He is loving

with beets and greens, every

meal a last meal.

IV. Interjection

-I mean nothing by it- I am full

of love but it is a directionless tumult

gush, both rapid and rapids, leading

nowhere: I exist within a halo of spray

blue-green and luminous

tender riparian vortex, wide-open

and trap.

V. More Rain

More rain came today, with

a generosity, sudden thrashing

that I had always suspected

God reserved for love.

It is sad that it doesn't really matter.

The sticks are tossed: for

years, we'll read them every day

fire by fire.

But for me:

because I am bone and

also bouquet,

flesh and also flash-

flood,

nothing matters more.

In my state of marginal

illness, of marginal wellness,

nothing matters more

And all I can think of is the noise I might make when expressing physical pain

I see myself in you

in the way you are a smudge of light in a dark

space, strange lit-up bug hovering

beside the entrance of roaring

vacuum

anomaly of energy

I read your poems and

I keep thinking that you’re talking about masturbating,

but I’m the one talking about masturbating

and the vision of a golden hand reaching up

through me as if searching for

keys on a hook

hanging from the roof

of my mouth

it still hovers like some drug

vapor, and all I can think of

is the noise I might make

when expressing physical

pain

because I am groaning

beneath the heft

of this life

and I labor beneath the laboring

body, coral bones of

some ghost as they batter

against the oppression of

our strange and

stratified timelines-

Life lines

I’m going to have to tear whole

cliffs to

sand with my fingernails

I’m going to have to bottle sweat

and sell it to myself as a cure