eyes closed
the world vanishes
a switch is flipped
and I’m adrift

but the world spins on
i can hear it
if i listen

otherwise, it’s just chaos on a distant shore

two planks plonk against one another,
and I await a judge to call this world to order

the tinkle of a tiny bell
reminds me of snapping icicles
but unless the world has shifted under me
i’m in a place that only knows icicles
on the inside of an ice-cream vendor’s cart

what has made the puttering
of the Jetsons’ car so bass?
oh, that is a scooter

as i drift
a montage sounds,
signalling a shipwreck on that far shore
the clunk of a timber washed against sea worn rocks,
creaking wet rope,
the moans of wounded sailors,
and the screech of a seagulls

I bumped my knee,

and got angry.

But, oh, my word,

it seemed absurd

to be enraged

as war I waged

on the kindling I made of that table.

Go ahead, run your hand over the surface.

Stroke reality to get your bearings.

But don’t name things.

Don’t categorize.

Don’t think that because you can label and box a thing that you have it contained.

— That you’ve sealed in its essence —

You’ve just locked it in a deeper strain of darkness.

I don’t want to turn your world on its head,
let out all the lunatics and lock away the normals.
I just want to poke holes in your boxes.

I looked through a hole in the world

to the lands that lay near beyond.

I saw the salmon glow of clouds,

and what the soot and dust had spawned —

a mighty sunset at mid-day,

a world betrayed by tides and time,

no light to feed the greens or blues,

but a bold palette from sky grime.

A schism ripped inside my mind.

You could picture a tear in a piece of paper.
But, that would be a lie.

The message on either side of torn paper can be reconciled.
Two halves of a page = one message —
disrupted but not beyond restoration.

When the tear is in the mind,
the further down the page one reads,
the more disjointed the message becomes,
until transformation becomes inversion,
and what one side of the page says is opposite the other.

“You must be reasonable!”

“Reason be damned!”

“It will be your down fall!”

“I have no further left to fall!”