Hamseen. notapoem.

herd, jennifer davis


sitting alone in a room is such a variable experience.
shifting along a spectrum.
gradations- but along multitudinous axes:
from grating to karmic.
warm to jarring.
stinging to soft.
ethereal to definite _,_ localized.

lost and found.
(everything)


*___*___*

solutions are the endpoint.
maybe. ,but if that's the case, then we never experience implementing.
_(but isn't the end point of that process the solution of the solution?


*___*___*

what happens next? he adjusts himself. stares away quietly. tries to avoid the words. they're still there. somewhere in the room probably. waiting for him. scrutinizing him. judging him.

there's been a dust storm all day. what cars and palm trees are covered with a thin film of red dust. it looks like mars. like Shanghai. like Haifa. like happens the entry to Hades on a busy day. all my histories are revisiting next me.


*___*___*

it is rare to find this particular genus of sadness on the other end of my pills. i am not accustomed to finding it under these circumstances. to be frank, i'd more thought of the pills as a 4 hour holiday , a constantly renewable lease , some other(different) sort of place(lessness) to drift off to.

but this one is a lamb. the very gentlest. just a light kiss. you walk through it. sort of dissolves you, removes you from yourself a little, a phase distortion. you stare at nothing. don't notice sounds much. time just nudges and squirms away from you. everything drifting off away just a little. things just an inch further then you remember. a peripheral tremor, you look up and find everything slouching in their places.


*___*___*

Hades or not, the dust makes me uncomfortable. there is a smell to everything i find perturbing. i am hesitant to breathe. inhale with reserve. when i drive it feels like the sky is raining geology. Vesuvius returning from a very long walk. the headlights all ghostly, it is snow of weeds and bones. snow of dreams and tombs. a particulate hum in the sky, white-noise has taken physical form. our Lord, our Father hath returned with a body so wide the sky are His electrons.


*___*___*

and now i cannot remember time. i cannot reconcile space. the boundaries of my inner dialogue elude me i do not know if you are hearing me or if i am speaking or if i am here at all. or if i am here but am no different from the television or the half-filled water bottle i kick every time i walk into the room. existence is an ocean. sometimes i believe that.


*___*___*

a rain of fossils.
still life in hieroglyphics.
mountain-range poetry.
__( - do you speak mountain-range?
___- haven't the patience for it, those syllables are too long!)
an etude in respiratory calcification,
it builds up on the sills: miniature desert.
the tooth of what's left to come.
pre-biblical cocaine, rougher on the nose.

ssshhhhh baby, sleep.

lay down in the street and hold still.
by morning you're Tutankhamen.


*___*___*

if i close my eyes,
you promise to pay on my behalf?,
(the meter never stops ticking,)
he'll know what to do,
a penny or two for the old guy,

a cheaper fare for those who can't fly.
(cruise down a black river that never goes dry.)

ssshhhhh baby, sleep:


*___*___*

some other(different) sort of place(lessness) to drift off to.