SOMETHING alive and old,
neither kind nor un,
existing in the contiuous webbing of
sleep's golden threads - whatever phenomenon,
physical and holy, whatever first wakes me
into dull morning's subdued flesh tones
(look close or miss them)
riding and shifting through the cold,
thinning sky.
.

across certain glass store fronts
or full length vanity,
I feel my image (not mine) pulled from
me (not me).
I have learned mirrors to be dangerous
so I let it slide off and I don't look
- something wrong there,
made acute by my instinct
to turn away, though the mirror image,
it does watch me. jealous I suspect,
and preoccupied perhaps, with raw desire to
do it better than I do -
being 3 dimensional solid -
ha - as if I were.

it watches with wet hush yearning,
sighs in search for something finer
than wit or beauty.
it just wants
to be touched.

touch mysterious,
ineffable -
silk spark contact whispered by socks
across wooden floors,
whispered under music where night still and
always resides.
skin on sheet and sheet
unwinding the dream tide.

mirrors, not dark in themselves,
illuminate something they can never be -
a margin wan and shadowed, or warm and ever near,
but never quite arrived.

my protest is muted with intricate
grief.

loss is thatched like a window - compartmentalized -
compact- 3rd -bird's eye view of a lifeless live stream.

I am onlooking on and looking out, on and on,
I am rapt and riveted by the scenery
brought to me - the audience, once seated, ushered in and
orderly, becomes the show.

and me again, utterly speechless

and wondering, amidst humanity's applause for its SELF,
how being well adjusted in a sick and dying world, signifies
success or mental health.

I postpone sleep, and then too,
waking - the pier-less space between planes,
the too plain too brite day,
overt and accusing with curtained
shadows, waving thin and roomy and ever at vigil
-nocturn devotion even through noon.
their mood loiters, nervously slowed to deliberate
distortion; scavenged shimmers of the riptide
currents filled with work weak busysounds
and its caved in undertow …

they don't know
I am here.