The theater is self-contained

and then self-enclosing, like an oyster shell

pink ribbons and flesh-colored brilliance

reflecting on the inner wall,

sudden darkness once the shell

has closed. The origin of the world

may never be found, locked in a mass

of tangled ropes, swaying with the tides,

a prisoner of our dreams, a captive

of our senses, how can I nurture this life?

Where you feel the pulse racing

through a tiny muscle in your neck,

the wheel keeps on turning, it turns

until it stops. Childhood spliced

into fragments, the records tossed

into a vain shoebox, opened irregularly

and easily forgotten; outside a parade

sweeps past the suburban block, girls and boys

hold hands, french-kissing in the crowd,

parents sulk in the heat, holding flags.

Above all, the clouds pull apart like taffy

and the center reveals a satin hue,

it's nighttime and my devotion to these spectacles

is constant and mad, as if I'm viewing

my own poor imprint on the world.

I carry home a banquet and pry open

the door, flies emerge from a carcass

I never knew I had. Unreason dresses me

in the morning and I'm weighted down by

superstitious charms, I don't even have to travel

to hear sermons for what I'm after;

delusion wears a costume of elegant ties

and writes verse in an empty cell.

I'm back at the beginning

as if I've gone nowhere

I demand my rose and my pearl

both were lost along the way

look over this cliff

do you see tomorrow receding

beneath yesterday's waves?

every wrinkle of hope

belongs to another part of me

I don't think we can save ourselves

it is too cold, too deep

the world, family, strangers

reside in far off places, rarely visited

by myths and fables

here the spiral moon talks

to a chorus of insects

I envy your silence, your faith.

Earlier today, it was the heat

bearing down on us . . . the heat like a thousand rattlesnakes hissing in the continuous burn of the sun. I slept well past noon, I shouldn't have, but when I awoke and went outside, it didn't seem to matter that I was unconscious, possessed by dreams I don't remember.

Much of my life is fixated on the missing things, what I don't have. As if projected on a screen in front of me, everywhere I go, I see what I am not, I see what I do not have.

I believe that if life is ironic in any way, it is ironic in how the things we deeply want, the things we pine for, are withheld from us at about an arm's length. What I mean by this is, in any moment your life can change, and that which you desire could easily stand before you. Not many times, but sometimes this happens, when our wishes come true and the world seems like a dream.

But for the remainder, we are nomads in the desert, experiencing mirages daily.

The heat effects the senses by a wrinkle, creasing the air until it feels like a blanket were wrapped over my head.

I have searched for objects far and near to hold my attention. Could this be related to the irony of life? That nothing ultimately holds our attention?

There is, however, a singular devotion that each of us can call our own. We become it over a lifetime, and this must be how a human soul can take on a definite form, and that form can be embedded in history.

The heat crawls, it moves across stunned windowpanes, and thick asphalt. And nothing is like the silence in summer, where the heat settles on parks and baseball diamonds, in suburban backyards, and fields of crops extending to the highway.

The heat waits, it lingers, and as it lingers, it grows, layer upon layer . . .

I'm easily distracted by the sun. It makes me want to go inside after a short while. I take refuge in the air conditioning of the hopeless cafe. Maybe I will see some more beautiful women who will avert their eyes when I look at them . . .

We remember our lives in a certain kind of narrative. That narrative proceeds from a point and moves forward. And then it drops off at the present and seems to hold that note forever, and we hear the monotonous note again and again, and that is the present.

The irony is that, as humans, we are condemned to living this incomplete dream. One part of the dream is real and the other part, unfinished. For the unfinished part, we busy ourselves with imagining new endings in countless ways. Summer abides in these moods of sweltering languor, when desire is shunned by the heat and souls are forced to move inside--

It is there I find my singular devotion. Where hours are abundant and empty, and every room reminds me of the bedroom I grew up in.

True splendor lies in recognizing the thing you've always had. All the longings, cravings, and wishes fall off like scales . . .

And while the heat is stirring outside the window, and the fields shimmering in the sun, I'm liberated inside my house, the dullest place in the land, a container of restless boredom on most days . . .

Ecstatic--because for the first time I am in possession of the part of the dream that is real.