Turn away if you’ve heard this one before:
morning headlines rarely bear a mention
in the night. In the night there was a flood.
It made a mess of all my best intentions
and gave the world the crazy tilt
of Sabbath days devoid of guilt
and washed the plain with black abundant silt.

Heading home. Sleeping at the airport gate.
Shrinking from the needling morning sun spots.
In my dreams I am always heading home.
I am always sneaking through the same lots,
through heavy fog on Boston streets,
through San Francisco shocked with sleet.
The mountains rise above this tireless circumstance.

There will never be an end to this half-birth,
no rest for the kidneys or the palms of the hands.

Like a king, I wake up immaculate,
I resist the telephone and windows.
I try to breath, try to take the time I need,
but my heart is beating like a mole’s.
I can’t accept that vast belief,
that mountain range without relief,
the trappings of a mind that shoots its messengers.

There will never be an end to this half-death,
no rest for the kidneys or the soles of the feet.

When we were driving west, you told me
your head was a balloon in the thinning air
bursting under the pressure of the raw interior scenes,
the clamber of your genes, and the basic lack of means
that blazed up before the mountains of the skyline
like delirious refinery flares–
they’ll show you just what all this wasteland’s good for.
Drive, I’m pulling over. I’ve got no nerve
for deserts anymore. Hum a sleepy road song
for Selene.

But mountains change their shape as you approach,
make you think you’ve never really seen them.
Your thoughts distend, seeing hardens into needing,
openness becomes an empty craving–
and then there’s all this rock and space
to take the mirror from your face,
to lay out all your loss for you in one place.

There will never be an end to this half life,
no rest for the kidneys and the back of the mind,
so I repeat myself.
I repeat myself.