The Stand Still

still life captured in long drawn shutters. battered as I seem, I am number than numbers. inside a picture: eighteen black tulips with spots of a leopard. a vase of water, a vase of earth. catch bugs like hay fever and ride into hillsides. honey bee handle me, grasshopper flies into my jar. (I want to rest anywhere, nowhere up high) inside a picture: eighteen black horses (nightmares) with manes long as summer and hooves hard as the winter’s biting. awake in a thousand sleeping clouds. running or falling...wasteland is calling. skies tracing thin paper...so smooth on rough fingers, I wonder the other, holes punched out we are under cover. now I’m stuck stitching clouds back together...my distance always burns things slowly apart, but it’s equally corrosive from afar sometimes...estranged by time. lizard-like and lazy I head east- sleeping in castles and walking on water, glossy world ball drips molasses flavor. trancelike, squinting foolishly into the fluorescence of streetlamps, babies breath whispers “pollination” and dainty daunts quiver. estranged by time…am I running or falling? forcing self into a shell. crackling still life within me to siphon water out of well. lick the golden edge to cut and drip red. fumbling into sadness and darkness in being, heaving at the altar, stomach concave. sometimes I can't wait for the seasons to change. sometimes all I need is that familiar taste of pain once in a while, so I can standstill...it’s ten below and I can’t feel my toes. if we start walking we’ll be fine you know. well if we walk straight we’re bound to get somewhere else. who cares where we go as long as we leave ourselves behind.