Sometimes you can knock yourself out
taking whatever it takes to get wherever it is
and you do it, for hours, and for hours
you try out the trick called not being there
and maybe you sleep and maybe you drift
but you wake anyway on a dead chicken pillow
with a rat in your brain and a bat in your mouth
and though you clean each one of your teeth,
paste on a face that will just about do,
you still can’t remember still can’t recall
the numbers and names of each drop of the rain.
Something is missing, something is wrong:
that stain on your shirt, is it yours?,
that dark in your face, that trace of a voice
overheard at the moment you dived into silence
out of the clock-driven bird balmy universe
back of the Nostar Hotel of night plumbing and thumps –
that voice that said but what did it say, those words
those beautiful shards, they won’t be back now.
Think. Drink hot black tea, black coffee.
Think of the sea. Think of the sweet shift of wheat
with the wind gone through it, just as the sea is.