Invisible Dreams

La poesie vit d’insomnie perpetuelle —René Char There’s a sickness in me. During the night I wake up & it’s brought a stain into my mouth, as if an ocean has risen & left back a stink on the rocks of my teeth. I stink. My mouth is ugly, human stink. A color like rust is in me. I can’t get rid of it. It rises after I brush my teeth, a taste like iron. In the night, left like a dream, a caustic light washing over the insides of me. * What to do with my arms? They coil out of my body like snakes. They branch & spit. I want to shake myself until they fall like withered roots; until they bend the right way— until I fit in them, or they in me. I have to lay them down as carefully as an old wedding dress, I have to fold them like the arms of someone dead. The house is quiet; all night I struggle. All because of my arms, which have no peace! * I’m a martyr, a girl who’s been dead two thousand years. I turn on my left side, like one comfortable after a long, hard death. The angels look down tenderly. “She’s sleeping,” they say & pass me by. But all night, I am passing in & out of my body on my naked feet. * I’m awake when I’m sleeping & I’m sleeping when I’m awake, & no one knows, not even me, for my eyes are closed to myself. I think I am thinking I see a man beside me, & he thinks in his sleep that I’m awake writing. I hear a pen scratch a paper. There is some idea I think is clever: I want to capture myself in a book. * I have to make a place for my body in my body. I’m like a dog pawing a blanket on the floor. I have to turn & twist myself like a rag until I can smell myself in myself. I’m sweating; the water is pouring out of me like silver. I put my head in the crook of my arm like a brilliant moon. * The bones of my left foot are too heavy on the bones of my right. They lie still for a little while, sleeping, but soon they bruise each other like angry twins. Then the bones of my right foot command the bones of my left to climb down.