a name poured out with a cup of afternoon coffee. now, both name and coffee, gone.

i am not going blind.
it’s the time of year,
not my eyes.

i start to mumble
into mild pre-panic,
around 3pm.
i squint to see.

the sharpness of a day’s claws,
grow fuzz like unwashed teeth.
teeth, tombstones
for the words we wished
we’d not said, and those we wished
we had.

the mouth, such
an erotic graveyard.

i am not using my tongue to keep
myself heard. is that what a tongue is for?

these eyes may spin and roll but still
they are resolute. they do not dim,
only being the perceiver of such.
day dims; do claws retract or
elongate, in the lengthening of evening?

i switch on a light and give
my eyes a kind pat.
they in turn look
for me out from small window
above kitchen sink. there,
where the gray of rooftop meets
the excitement of sky.
will it also be gray,
this sky? or
will it fill itself
and my eyes
with its vacant blue?

Ivan Aivazovsky. “The Black Sea at Night”. 1879

Published by Zak

an intertidal island in an ocean of impermanence.

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