Nocturnal Dimensions of the Future 
 

Once I drew a line around myself, dug my shape into a rich field   

Some night fell in, bruising itself   

The fresh dirt was a muscle stowing away years   

It wasn’t dead, it just couldn’t sleep   

I stuffed night’s hem into my mouth to stay shut   

Night also buttoned up when it couldn’t find a thing to adorn 

When it couldn’t find a fly to swallow   

If I keep my eyes quiet, if it mistakes me for blind  

I dry heave fits of impure air  

One night, until I had it all to myself 

If I could retrieve that night from a dream 

Its air wakes up inside my lung, bearing amplifications 

Shovels score the dark and damage allergies 

When I am awake back and forth for so long I can’t remember   

Being left or not being left alone, I fall bed to bed to bed  

If I could move toward it while moving away  

Night kills what it shifts into; I pine for what I alight 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

I looked in all eight directions then spread my tiger’s skin on the floor.  Before the public mind kicked in, I surveyed an inner shore.  Its crystal facets operated on me. I lost my lights and began my midnight thus:  mental feet, mental lake, little mental pines, mental mile around the muzzle.  I aimed my automatic at that outlandish organ hanging in the sky like a dazed stone. Its sea expression wet the evening air; I captained the tempest there. Looking too long into the distant human pupil, I sharpened my harpoon. But my hands could not be organized. I wanted to tightrope up there on a mental binge. I reached for my quiver, and soon arrows ascended the degrees, bristling. My bird described a failure one depth below time. The moment rotated. Its color was extreme. In a heavy steel helmet, I matched that orb and tried to tackle it by a hundred mental muscles. The more I bruised it, the more I couldn’t see it. If I could turn it open like a glass knob, feel my way in. If I could tongue out its creamy mouth. If I could tickle it and bounce it on my knee. If I could dress it up. If it would fist me, if I could force it. The more I battered that moon, the more I could be it. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Nine stitches and liquid morphine cannot keep it closed 

Lunar halo runs circles more than hollow  

Steel birds fly from clocks 

Striking the same hour in rounds 

A freak disease tears across the vista  

You’ve been told this is the year of medicine 

Lunar halo must bother you tonight with some life 

Stronger than satellites with strong melancholies 

The situation of radar gone deaf 

War shine and flare lit in the lips 

A ring of unknown men waiting 

To think of it is a tourniquet  

Embracing you to the point to the point of 

Sugar awake in the animal disaster 

Vaccinations break and they bother you  

The situation of its waves 

Puts catheters in blather-mouths 

Time for you to ride  

Even when it acts hypnotic or botched 

Tornado hanged in example 

Eye sticking to its guns 

It must bother you with oblong torment tonight 

Between your deserts and escaped stars 

Messes of radial spoils steal on you 

Recognize your continuous tattoo 

Lunar halo casts your face in harassments 

It dissolves former weather in your ear 

Takes up with your hexes 

Ice becomes gas blasting into a foam hole 

Out of which zodiac carcasses crawl 

Under lunar halo, anyone who waits  

For sleep waits to be seen to 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

My first mind is night driving on and on. My blood evolved from this pitch and one night’s tar accumulated in my mouth. If I go with my face made up, occult currents get plumbed. Their magnetic air is self-taught and not handled well. If I am fully in night, I cannot think ahead or use a song to get there. Night makes time by not remembering to go back. I make it mine by owning up to what I am not. Stars are swinging doors that miracle away the shift.  I am driving high into the taste of vanishing and starting points. Their arrows double-joint the dark. I am driving into my own eyes. Yellow lights pill the horizon hills. If I keep night to my right side, it ramifies at me until my solitudes splinter. My pulse stuck to the signal: turnoverturnoverturn.     
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

you may pound this night as much as you please 

you will never pound into me what you think 

you say the contrary, and the lashings madden 

night thinks you should pay for it 

pound at your belief until it’s empty of you  

loaded with lords aft and boxes of forward lucifers  

but how could a lucifer get fire in this crying night 

you could fill buckets at your drenched hems  

no lightning rod will channel this night  

            (it will pound me no matter) 

and better than a stormbird on its last wing 

you pound this metal against my skull 

defang the dark’s thunderstalk swerves  

words pound at me because I won’t use them 

night gnaws and unknots the anchor  

your lordish hours form unknown conduits 

and unknown songs empty into my lungs  

only to drag dark after me and lurk it in my orders 

it pounds its meaning into me 

that blankness packed with impressions I will not salvage 

I endure the irate backpounding 

endure the obsessions that stand in for you  
 
 

I borrowed hours to finish you and borrowed a dream to falsify my night. I borrowed night after night until I had one to myself—abandoned that night. I borrowed a prayer in owl light, borrowed devotion and the words. To be sure, I borrowed a cocktail dress. Felt my way along night-blooming creepers until I felt extravagant with a cigarette. I borrowed that and your infant phantom. I took it on credit. I took out what I took me to be. I borrowed a stone room to keep you and kept you in the dark. I grew another dark and owned its circulation. Borrowed a second wind, and left a note on fair trade. I made the words fall, made the falls faster. Into a hole I dug. I tried to rescue that silence. I entered it in my lab coat, and I entered it on a black horse. Driven to the wrong address, I burrowed in. I borrowed your only idea and gave away darkness. I tried to give way, to the dark I tried to give a way.  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

let the ocean uptake shape your cover 

if by memory foam, if on a dream-fast 

do not use a sleep mask because of your thoughts 

snuff out the count with an open mouth 

let your night cape have a gas-hole 

lie groveling on your belly  

the lead body lies down with the feather body  

you are not one of the guards  

even if you can still feel  

if your position is diagonal enough  

a dark ball rolls void into you 

hasten to make use of that freed dark 

empty it the way fatigue 

is a way of worship if smashing waves  

do not listen for where the sound ends 

if smashing waves consolidate you then 

night never finishes even if 

fully in it would you be unable to 

as undertow takes the child think 

of each part of your body vanishing your skin 

as the dark that stares and stares back