a series of nightmares: circa 2003

I have had bad dreams in my bed,

shuffling through letters and windows

and the tiny holes I worm in cerebellums

while today I feel gray like rain drops;

the air turning moist like my breath.

the skin is too thick so I peel it off with

potato knives and drop it down to my feet like a cloak,
God to be bone and soul and pink, pink muscle;

stretch of a tendon around neck lines:

how erotic. how naked. how nothing;
this life on a couch in the summer.

the thickness of heat that sticks to your hip

and I’ve been living my life on restraint for you,

moving my mouth but not speaking,

a hollow ring around the words I can’t say and

all night I have been screaming your name with out any sound
and all you can do is respond with one word in receivers,
not hearing the cord as it wraps around my throat

while I breathe, a snapshot of love on a night in a jail,

a layer over life like film,

nightmares like the shake of aluminum sheets

in tornadoes and the rattling of teeth in the dawn.