we all are dancing firecrackers

we all are dancing firecrackers
keep that match from out our faces!
creep creep forward into night flowers
watch those candles burn: smell their effervescence

you all are mangled hornpipes,
those expended bladders in the wind
I mean, bagpipes not hornpipes
blow your drowning bladder drones
watch our eyelids quiver
we all can’t turn away from your satisfaction
(when in the silence of care, why?
why do the caves of silence echo?)

badwings flutter against the moon’s sweet curves
goodwings flow ice across the loch
the depths entrance us all
we all gaze into the greeny darkness
badwings shriek get caught in our hair

we all spend our time crying in the night
you all just whirl a crazy dreamtune

when care fills the belly
jelly’s all we can stomach

old old old

whereas, when the summer sun spins out into the night, these days there’s
just a fevered gray that gets right up there between the eyelids, filling
the brain with clammy dreams. don’t suppose there’s anything to do but wait,
these days, until they go away, until the sun can burn all through that grayness.
these days, a stranglehold of dreams and charmed lies keep me in bed, keep
me buzzing and whirling in the sound of air. that pillow whispers quiet into
my ear. yes. and when I wake and see the mirror, there are fingermarks pressed
red into my flesh. perhaps I’ve wrestled with my dreamself, squabbling over
that stark and ephemeral toast. what can one say, when all around is a cavalcade
of trying waves of thought. when the eyes want to close of their own accord.
cheerily, we march along and then the blackwave rushes past and I remember
being seaward swarmed by ocean as a child. that rush and thunder of water
in the ears and cloudy sanded vision. taste that salt as it forces down your
lips. damning words. mind the sea, mind the sea and don’t remember anything,
but that. you can’t trust it. never turn your back.