Alternate dimensions

Sometimes I think about how different my life would be.

 

Impaired

 

Somewhere between

the folds of time and space

there’s another me, suspended

in her own pocket of the cosmos of my imagination-

 

another me

who never finds herself distracted

when passing by a mirror,

and who doesn’t use her hands

when speaking, because her powers of observation

hit a snag at the tunnel-ends

of her eye sockets.

 

In silence she is alone

with infinite angles

visions unfathomable,

uninspired by the entire galaxies of fading stars

strung in bursts of radiant color

across the trees just outside

her window.

I don't procrastinate, I write poetry

(The following is the product of two hours spent NOT doing research.)

 

My window is a two-way mirror

 

Outside, trees shiver in the breeze,

stripped bare by glaring streetlights

like things I didn’t mean to say.

 

 

Not for the first time, I am reminded

of uncategorized dreams that linger-

salt in my eyes,

dew on blades of grass-

catching like ghosts on my fingertips

that melt away before the sun can ask their meaning.

 

The world holds a labyrinth of tomes un-perused,

poems untitled, but my muse

must have gotten stuck on your windshield,

and anyway,

the sky has something to tell me.

A litter-ary experience

On an un-lonesome drive

passing through the uncharted distance

between dots on a map,

with all its trees-yet unnamed-

I saw a runaway take-out box

pirouette over grass on the median,

like a styrofoam ballerina

in defiance of the environmentalists

and their landfills,

its only wish to dance along the highway,

with the crisp autumn wind swirling

around its corners.