cutting great neck

are you a poem
or just a sordid fantasy?

if you’re blind as a bat
then can you feel the night?
or do you just
melt into it, the ridges of your separation
becoming more and more fluid,
blacker even than your memories
of color? can you feel the darkness
rise up in a flood,
the bent cold unseeing of it
like water gushing up?

are you written
in lines as long as fingers,
in verses as thick
as smiles? is there
a voice behind those lips,
a thought behind
those words? when will the wind
sweep you up like a stray piece of paper,
a current under everything?—
when is truth?

i’ve been out thinking
along those routes
of the mind, littered with pebbles
and half-consumed dreams.
and i wonder if
you’re there along the road too,
thinking, dreaming,
as the twilight begins to fizz,
and the darkness
eats away at the heart of quiet,
each chirp like the crack
that lost its bite.