The Dark Reactions

I carry sleep in me.
A lake, just here

beneath the eye:
a vial of milk

to wash whatever is
too clean, too
latched in sequence.

⁕ ⁕ ⁕

A simple dark–
Only the shapes
of touch, outlined

body to sheet.
Knee, heel, cheek.

Striations and dots:
a blind map

flat as within
the water’s skin.
Ignorant of stars.

⁕ ⁕ ⁕

I carry days in me.
A buzzing pointillism:

embers of remembered
sights. All I have seen

is a miasmal wall
the retina retains:

the constellated Dome
reflected in

a sunken bowl,
caldera of the skull

⁕ ⁕ ⁕

Into ocean-cold
dreams, reach:

each fear or lust
emerges like a stone.

Hand-sized, having lost
color and roar.

The inborn shape
you thought to make

is gone, though you
may still become

obedient
to gravity and love

⁕ ⁕ ⁕

You can walk through the same stream once
and when you do, it is the sky

⁕ ⁕ ⁕

Think of your soul
as knowing nothing
says St. Isaac.

Press your palms
against your eyes.

Fossils of light
embossed in us.

Abseil there
through peridot,

a rorshach forest
of tesselated ferns,

ascend cobalt star charts:
Lapis lazuli, footstool

of the heavens
of the mind.

Unfasten the rungs
of reason once
you clamber

down or up
matters not.