There’s a choking haze
in the days
following the strawberry moon

My lungs feel like dried up
worms on the sidewalk
pelted by sharpened shards of light

I take some moments to read
maybe 20 poems
and several are like deep conversations
with strangers,
my own heart poured out
in the mirror of their eyes
They are as much myself as I am

I try to roll my body around on the floor
stretch and move-
Like dried out dough, it resists.
I try to ignore the pounding of my head
The nausea from piles of aspirin
and week long migraines

My eyes long to open wide
through their screwed up squinting,
to kiss and hug everyone
to see myself as a deep, cold well
in glistening colors
as on fine sables
a softness that trembles
the very foundation of science

We are so much more than bodies
struggling to make functions
calculators in pails of treacle

We are more than shapely buttocks
We are more than strands of lavender
and wishes fulfilled
We are more than wonder blooming
within rocks
making time look like a toy dog
that rolls along, wagging its tail

We are more than words scrawled on a page
more than wondering what-how-why
more than hoping for what how why
more than longing

Perhaps when we die we find out what it is to be all that and nothing

And perhaps we are only here or there,
or beyond here or there
to be reaching
to trickle downhill
to never culminate any way, how, where.

What is it about love that shows us this?
What is it about contrast
that encircles,
that continues to define
beyond ends
beyond time