in between

Like a balloon filled with air and tied at the neck

Released

Slowly deflating 

No fear but the ending

Molecules unstuck

Particles leeching back into where 

they began like a song

The slow fade out, living some kind of climax

Before the repetition starts

Or the jam

An unwinding of structure that leads to silence

Before the band picks up again

And in that silence

What silence

Some kind of gasp or breathlessness

Or simply a continuum 

Part of the music

Or part of the in between
What floats away

for Doug

In our portraits of the dead

We draw veils

Transparent and pure

Weightless, untouchable

Barely perceptible --

We walk through them

Like a breeze,

A passing thought:

We see through them

Into nothing

We are mostly unconscious 

To the truth of this, or lack thereof --

The possibility that our understanding

Is inverted, and instead

The dead see through us

Clearly, as if through a reticle:

Not merely through but into

And out again --

A devouring of intention,

judgement, plans --

The work we do and or have done

And how 

Our scores mark up 

Against a godliness 

For comparison's sake --

And would we feel it then, these

Eyes of the aftermath, 

Eyes of eternity

Poring through our bodies like light

Through a magnifying glass --

Or light trapped

Inside a prism --

Identifying each part unseen, unrealized:

Would it feel like air

Would it feel like this

Is it our breath

whatever it was you liked or needed

the feeling returns
something like a tremble
from the outside towards the center
a summoning 
a physical memory of a connection
to the unseen
a dose of it, this ancient sense
remarking on 
the glory of it all;
the impossibility
with nothing short of lightning

and then a grounding.
reality again must assume everything
can be touched and conquered
and is whatever it fucking looks like

i am writing a poem
for the first time in months
and just now the computer on my wrist
reminds me to walk at least two-hundred and fifty 
steps this hour
or my time will not be counted 
i will not progress

sometimes i do as it tells me
or, as an alternative 
peer into a MacBook Pro 
with more than twenty-five open tabs 
leading me to infinite permutations
of brief, dissonant escape

it is bleak, but i am still summoned
i listen and respond
to the old and powerful vibration
in my heart

do these milestones;
this progress towards adulthood
represent more than the breaking 
of a horse?
maybe the strongest wills have a secret wish 
to be broken
to be softened 
into something more favorable and more tenable and 
whatever it was you said you liked or needed

all the editing before the thing is written
interrupted by electrostatic discharge
the chaos of control