Dan Raphael
i wonder if the colors i see out my window—
orange green grass, damp asphalt, silver cars
that seldom move—are the colors inside me
which immediately change when flesh is opened,
air admitted, any light stronger than what
skin can filter, the blood in its vacuum sluices,
nerves aspark like distant lightning in a sky
worn through in spots we usually call stars
when they’re scars or abrasions, preventative thickening
as i’m constantly among blunt objects and gravity
in the other half of my house who is someone else
lights come on before eyes open, water is released
before anything comes in, can take hours for breakfast
to reveal itself, alert for the chance of protein
and other species, the pong of the pre-dawn sweat
of unwanted visitors, unwanted instructions i could follow
without realizing, cause habit almost never jumps the tracks
just sometimes takes a siding it’s passed thousands of times
a different day every 3 to 5 hours, minimum daily requirements
of inertia, repair, behavioral cul-de-sacs, spoonfuls of
invention and light, a pinch of dried future, a breath
as long as a pop song with no time for anyone to solo,
stretch my fingers, tap my toes, i’m an asteroid
of corduroy and wool, 2 meters that was never prairie
or woods, this water not from the sky or plumbing
but my own distillation, steamed by the sun and
anything inside me ready to burn today