There was a moment in the hallway
walking from the podium of the bathroom mirror
to the safety relative of the bed
when if an eye could look with speed
the darkness lit partial by the badness of moon
light could be seen singing as it bled.
The 3:15 Mary could be if
through broken baby veins in eyeball murk
a vision can be swatched and tesseled
seen to dance in empty glory
like a nine winged bird attempting flight
in telephoto silence or the span of hair legged spider
falling down a frictionless tube
toward a torture splayed windpipe.
There was a moment in the hallway
when fingers closed on a cold door knob
when if an eye could look with speed
the door jam wretched and gut checked
and swallowed back disgust.
The space between the floor and corner
coughed up a sound of phlegm
that landed on the tip of brows and dripped
sullen around sockets to ear lobes end
before closing tight and resuming watch
like a man too old to be
pretending to sleep.
The television is idle
when eyes are there to watch.
The radio calls quietly,
but does not do well with names.
Away through windows moisture builds
and plays it's barrel noted games.
Electricity flows and charges not a thing
and the pulse to eardrums is
not the blood in veins.
Twelve hours before
daylight shone and quieted so many things.
It's not the dead that rise by night
or the fingers of quantum error
and rubber stamped souls
that grip the skin of necks.
It's not the forgettable lives that want
or the unfed and toothed that come to seek.
The kept empty and filled liter bottles of
brown specked urine and pots of
chewed beef bones. The drawer of
greased paper shreds and single bloodied paper clip.
The pot of dried water and shred of onion skin.
The bits of thread picked
from the underside of a tongue and
the sheet of butcher paper still balled and stowed
in the mitt of a favored cap.
There was a moment in the hallway
when the floor board skittered like a pair of
raven mice through a slit in the street lit paint.
A moment where the eyes could feel
the gap where reason can never reach
and in that field of points and long stemmed flowers
sprouted from mass graves
a knowing can descend and age
and seal the parts of a body's nerve
and teach it ever to speak.
