In dreams, my hand closes over a foreign throat
an unknown windpipe collapses in my grip.
Anger tears me so I whip as a crazed dervish
trapped in a scarlet den of heat, careless of pain,
temples throbbing with viscous blue veined fire.
On waking, moonlight bathes my clammy skin,
light curtains float gentle as feathers
and I pull stifling blankets back from my sternum.
They are damp with moisture sucked from my skin
by virus, and the spinning Earth that makes me dizzy
with its endless, endless rotations.
SCATTERED III
Ah, the sunshine of health! Where are you?
I lie and lie, listening to the passing of time
in the quietest hours of the night -- it is marked
by the pulse of traffic lights and ocean breakers.
I lie, and toss, and lie again a different way,
listen to the moments of this precious life dripping
as sick-fumed saliva not far from where I am.
As far as I myself can go -- just to my pillow.
