notebook home
doomcookie.com

moon in my teeth

Everything informs the dreamer that she should awake;
alarm clocks, bells, black cats, a hand on the shoulder.
You wrap yourself in your doomsday blanket and walk out
into the dance that is this quotidian movement,
a second hand sweeping and you're thinking
that once you've seen the bones the flesh is nauseating.
It's an illusion, the lady wiggling in the sword-box
and sucking in her stomach to avoid the blades.

Still. It must be done. You fantasize about
gritty warehouse lofts and mansions in the woods,
driving or walking or taking the bus to work, head heavy
with the burden of interrupted sleep. Wouldn't be my world
without hangovers or broken hearts.

Here, all you consume is water. You long to see
your own bones, going at truth from the outside,
and that isn't catchpenny hunger but you persevere.
Giving up isn't a checkbox on the forms titled
'what I did today' or 'while you were out'.

Keep on. Someday there will be a beautiful curve of white
ribs stark against the rich loam you're buried in; that is,
if you believe the advertisements. Not sure? There's insurance
against fire, flood, disease; there must be someone selling
disillusionment insurance. Perhaps it comes under the heading
'disaster'. "And at what point did you first realize you'd been lied to?
Describe how much your innocence was worth."

The faceless around you sway as you sink into your daily communication
with a world that has no name through a screen that paints pretty pictures
with light on your retina, a distraction against that persistent second hand.
Working on a server you've never touched, you realize there's a woman
behind you. She's smiling. Between her teeth clenched a rocky glowing
ellipse. Her bones click as she gestures in sign the word for why.

3/3/2000 (with gratitude to Christopher Bingham)