Two Poems: On Being

Waking up

In my waking moments trapped

Behind hot eyelids 

Before open doors 

Cracked ajar by drug-laced demons

Sprawled and hiccuping on the floor,

I see all that I dodged before.

Not for peace or patience 

Do I go there alone and pry

My eyes with these borrowed needles,

Nor for the sickness of the soil

Do I suffer this union quietly,

But for the beast and the broil

That sheds its constant turmoil. 

Paper Lantern, Spinning

In the dream of passing days 

The grisly record plays and plays 

The same sweet pastel lullaby 

To which the image flashes by.

And you, my seraph, bound with light

Are never, as then, full and bright

As in those paper lantern scenes

Of days before the holocene.

Beyond this moment to which we cling 

Lie everyone and everything 

And yet we play the motions out and say

What a fucking precious day!

We mourn today before the dusk

Our eyelid movies short and brusque 

Come to their end and then we sleep

Too late to live, too sad to weep.