kill all the lights

increase the darkness

I want you to notice the shapes in the shadows

these mottled specs can be the augur of belief

they’ve been with us since the caves, since prehistory

and it is not nothing

this darkness is not no words

it is too many words

your atrophied muscles can’t lift them

this nothing is too full of cruelty

and wrongness

to be called

nothing

this darkness

hides

too many monsters

to be called

void

and you have

too much machinery

around your love

for this

this enchantment

the ghosts in your bedroom you know you have loved

you long to pass your hand through theirs

they have a heart, the demons who can’t cry

who can’t understand melancholy

and you have a heart

for them

you know they think the cacti they offer

are night-flowers

the expectation behind their glassy eyes

is your expectation

so don’t be too clever

yesterday’s clever is tomorrow’s stupid

this path wends through magnanimity

it always had to be about the anti-logic of forgiveness

that shady thing that takes

the burning cracked cores

of life

and transmutes them

and leaves you wondering:

whose hand is it that’s showing the way?

what sleepwalking reasoning works beneath

this hooded cloak?