against my will

i lie down and my heart rises
like the moon rises from the edge of a field

corn stubble collapses into shadows
my body ghosted in cool light

G’ mornin’, Blues, have a cup of coffee with me.
G’ mornin’, Blues, have a cup of coffee with me.
I’m feelin’ kind of lonesome, I need your company. – Mad Dog

There are no colors in this dark room.
What we know we sense, if at all;
the different shades of emotions,
the stacking of shadow on shadow
like dark petals around a shaft of light.

Someone left this candle burning,
a door ajar,
the latch undone:
there is a way out.
Someone must have been here.

(I am not alone).
I go now knowing this
neither forward nor back
moving only in small circles
ever wider each time around.

There is this memory of a path.
I have chosen
to stay off of it,
yet it follows me
where ever I go.

I destroy myself step by step.
I create myself step by step.
I enter the room
with the candle.
I am not alone after all.

Whose handiwork is this:
this ring of dust worn round the fire,
this place littered with the noise of the poet,
this flame fed on looking inward,
this hovering of myself over myself?

It is true. I would be
alone if I were not here.
And what must I do
to get here again?
Outside lies the cold endless night.

Soon I will need to go:
die between the life and the living,
fall through the hole in the middle,
relive the slow death of the unreal
over and over again.

My hands cup the candle.
Between the cracks of my fingers
leak the illusions of color,
I seem to be tumbling
down through the lie of myself,

falling from dark now to darker,
swirling out of control
like storm-gray clouds
on the lee side
of a horseshoe ridge.

I love this place of white and gray
on the side of the ragged mountain.
Oh, that I could stay here until I was gone,
but there is no place to stand,
and there is no time to stop.

It is never over.
There is no end
to this beginning.
I would be over the edge
if there were an edge.

And so I hold the moment.
I choose to fall again.
This time I will drift
down like a snowflake
onto the warm, waiting tongue of the muse.
I am not alone after all.

No doubt it had been a rough night. Fred was hungry, drained, and running late again. Last night, the online hookers had swarmed over him like flies over an old out house. He had run sadly into their vague, virtual arms out of a nagging emptiness and now felt like a football stadium several hours after the home team had lost the championship game. He could feel the winds of his emotions rocking the dripping plastic beer cups under the bleachers of his dreams. He could almost hear the echoes of the crowd whining for just a little more a little too late. It was 10 years ago last month when the bank had sent him home early with the severance check after announcing the “big merger.” He had gone home to find his wife working on a merger of her own with Bob, his best friend from college. His check was quickly depleted by the move and the divorce, and his kids quickly forgot him, or so he liked to tell himself. Times seemed to just be getting tougher. Last night at the King Soopers, he had to leave his normal dinner of bean dip in the soda aisle to pick up a 12 pack of diet cream soda on sale for the same two dollars. And now he sat staring down into a dry bowl of Fruit Loops crowned with the stale crumbs of the last of the Lucky Charms. There had not been milk in his refrigerator for weeks, maybe months, yet this remnant of cereal was all he had between now and his shift at the foundry. He checked the frigde again. Miraculously, there was still a half of a quart of Schlitz somehow left. It would have to do. He poured it over the multicolored rings and whistled as it floated the sweet magic dust of the Leprechauns. It would definitely do. Today would be the first day of the rest of his life.