Insomnia

The darkroom sleeps, eyelids pulled closed,

carbonating air surrogating oxygen

so that the darkroom suffuses some head

– and now it’s a lightroom –

                        *

swish of tanned sand in sea,

beneath kicking feet, the sea dry

and the sun, adjacent to the sickle; cold

– the moon; dreamless.

Swizzle-stick finger in a face

like the sea, blue now green now brown;

eyes that are mouths that are lips

that are gone, ghostly hair that smells

like scattered pine needles around a base,

on a beach? No, in a still forest now,

with a gun, pink light-shaft shapes running

away from the V, tree-limbs falling,

tangling, knocking away the melting gun

in this con-temporaryscape, more trees

falling in some Neanderthal roar,

until a formulated roof blocks all oxygen

                        *

– and now it’s a heaving darkroom –

a hollow cell within something substantial,

the head tired of one pillow,

in some Niagaric mist of air and water.