TEMPLE HQ

THIS DREAM AGAIN, DEJA VU!

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12-1-2021

The fool on the hill, sun going down around the world disoriented and locked into darkness I’m falling stationary, within my body the increasing sensation recursion recursion of the soul going deeper into corner after the corner, the shadow stops at the far end of my room, curtains block the sun, shadow grows at the far end of my room, curtains block the sun, nowhere to nowhere, darkness grows. Darkness at the back of a poolhall bar second floor in the rural no-mans-land where women go missing. Darkness in a car headlights terrified against the night. Women dancing in fire. Darkness smells like warm beer and cheap lightbulbs and unhealed bruises smarting hellish for weeks, months.

A CANDLE, as a light, guidance through the forest, orange light spilling out to red then black as it recedes farther out from that fragile little bubble of safety carved about my person.

A CANDLE, as a fire, bubbling on a spoon, cotton soaking into the needle, dark liquid of salvation the only pleasure seeping like oil from the barren Earth so far from Bismarck, so far from Minneapolis.

HEADLIGHTS, like, A CANDLE AS A LIGHT, on the way to Winnipeg, lost in the white so empty it turns dark, lost in the plains where the roads go nowhere with perfect gridlines, dead body beneath a soybean field, gazing through mile after mile of chainlink across the dead Earth, across the bodies without funerals, across the sky dying so white it turns dark, across the sun burning, burning, burning.