My Camera Obscura

 

At night asleep, I'm

neither here nor there,

but extend in all directions,

as much of me behind

as ahead.

 

To dream is to go 

in search 

of someone who

understands that blood

is not red

in rhe dark,

but instead, 

the hue of

one's own shadow.

Are those gargoyles or angels?

They’re too high up to tell.

 

Night is a darkroom

of undeveloped negatives.

Occasionally a chimera’s

double exposure appears;

a picture in an exhibition

of rapidly depreciating prints.

Only when awake

am I able to

hold my life up

to the light.

 

At dawn,

I find the city

erased by fog

as if I’d traded

one dream for another,

deserted in a dim room

after traversing the

parameters of another life,

with nothing left but

to cut my losses.

Isn't remembering

my way of developing?

But no, the child

so filled with feeling

that his loneliness

had become a

sun-scorched

flower cannot stay.

Where is that smile

that knew

no greater grief?

What wicked trick

is this…returning me

to my youth without

any evidence

save the pure joy

of a breaking,

though yet

unbroken heart?

 

Imagine my surprise

at seeing

my younger self again.

Not in some photo

or on film

but in all my

fresh aliveness,

adorned by a crown

of seashells

dancing knee deep

in the holy

waters of a hitherto

unformed self.

 

Here, now

in this room

of morning

I need no news.

With no sign

of a ghost, and

no trace of pictures

that might

qualify as proof,

I'm only this fading

memory of what never

happened

wanting for a form

as clear as day.

 

These aren’t dreams.

They are the compass-less

machinations of some

interior camera obscura.

If you use the word

dream, you miss.

Everyday words fail

truths too unsayable

to be spoken.

Can't you see

some spell

has been broken?

 

Outside the window  

a twin fog is lifting.

The city regains

its rigid logic even

with its concrete

walls still wet

from weeping.

 

My body arrives 

home again

in a room made

by brute hands.

Yet I am infirm,

soft even, barely

able to contain

the blood

holed up inside me.

Where have I been?

Who can tell?

In a place where

nothing

and everything

was all my own.

Why end here

in the midst of

only half the world

when something

as simple as

a poem may

offer an answer?

  

4/17/23