after licorice twists fuse,

stars drop rumors of light,

& night glues itself to the attic windows.

his clock has neglected its bedside manner & strikes blank space.

sleep evaporates on contact.

he will mimic Bodhidharma's act of penance—

limbo begets a tic under lidless eyes

the background's tenor sax skitters into a funk at the implied violence.

Anti-gravity suffuses his tuck-away cubicle.

lightheaded,

tainted with urgency,

he is torn along radiating dotted lines,

the pink frame weighted by her gaze,

scolding his chain of anxious cigarettes.

he crumples in nerveless splendor, lays so the

reading lamp may bathe his face a yellowed pearl.

book titles have ceased to make sense.

he giggles, a protagonist in the diary of an

anal retentive, throwing himself away for the sake of blue-collar poetry.

the typewriter strikes blank space.

his soul is worth a handful of dreams.

     he pours a libation for the Sandman as

nanoseconds swell to the size of jellybeans.