For more than a moment
I thought he said that
the walls were panting
with excrement. ‘Oh, Frank,’
I thought, ‘so dark and
too soon.’ But it was
excitement with which
those walls were panting,
of course. The dark mood
was my own mind’s eye.
I’m only up to read (and
so screwily) because I
couldn’t sleep to begin
with, the swill in my head
swirling deep into someplace
neither my head nor I could
ever dig deep enough to reach.
I refused to turn anything on,
including myself. So with no
one to play with and nothing
to look at, I opened this book,
which could be both (something
to play with and something to
look at) were it not a night like
this. I dare not look up, lest my
own very walls, all out of breath
from trying to lift my spirits with
a storyboard of short happy dreams
might themselves be panting ever
so deliriously with excrement.
