What comes before
and after the fact
of my sleep:
I keep my heart at my eye
level so tyrants
have to bend to see
if its wild redness warrants
censorship. Even the light
seems lazy in its slug
-gish arrival these
longest days
of the year.
I need at least one
hour of darkness
before money,
before anything
is asked of me,
an hour when I feel nothing
can hurt me, this early.
The only beast I am
not safe from is myself,
and the whitecapped
headwaters of my dizziness
are that I can say a thing
once, two different ways—
or two times and mean
neither. You know it’s bad
when the only thing
keeping you from crossing
the center line
is the light of the open refrigerator,
and your life is far stranger
than your mother could have supposed.