It is only in the loneliness
of late-night drives
across prairie flatland
or sometimes in all-night werewolf runs down the coast
that I can lose myself….
Pulled onward by a wind-pricked moon, I wander lost,
Rubbing against clusters of stars passed from cloud pockets
Staring at the scalloped edge of sky and sea and land.
The tyranny of literacy:
Graven images, stone truths.
Mountain here means becoming still,
strength-in-waiting,
destruction through patience.
Memnosyne scribbled on matchbooks
And the dry margins of cocktail napkins
Words, pictures, emotions
Unable to be expressed in other forms.
The remaining photographs only show
a just-white chair, still rocking.
The illusion of contact continues:
I never was in that room;
I never sat in that chair;
they are not part of my life…
I am driven towards madness
by this life of dreams.
The impulse to dive (drive?) deep
into the wreckage of symbol, fantasy, metaphor
only to be drowned by the passing wave of experience.
These things are only real
because of their shadows.
The camera does blink:
No less fallible
than eyes of flesh and blood.