Clouds continue

16. in the muck

there’s a general fog lying over the world
and it’s leaked itself into my head

all the old subjects melting together in there
with its vague breath — the dids and donts and

shouldas stirring into the wouldas and
cants and ifonlys

i tell you there are no images to cling to
in this bottomless sea or maybe

dank quarry
fetid loch

but there must be a thesis
there must be a point

some divine lesson
swelling deep in the muck

and this insistent message
rises now with

prehistoric menace up
from the unimaginable deep

Day 22

Challenge: write about an emotion.

It’s easier to throw open the doors

to all your rage, to let it
plump your veins, and be swept
high by ecstatic panic — 

to let that hot drug prickle 
your dull skull alive —

than to stay inside, to allow
the clouds to soak 
your old brain, 

to carry your dark water
deep down 
in mud muscles,

and smile like a
distracted angel through 
that ordinary pain.