I stagger even in
sunlight, hung over
on moon glow I can't get out
of my head, a mist so frail
around me I break through it
with every step, summer
all stretched out around me
on every side and still I feel
a chill, the wait of city sirens
like magpies in my ears so small
and fast I can't swipe them
away. I taste loneliness on the
tip of my tongue like the bitter
remains of win drunk in
darkness but grows stale in this
dawn -- all too stark in this
morning light, like a bleached
out color film turned into hazy
sepia of black and white --
Everything seems too big, too
well-defined, street sign
groaning on rusted hinges with
each gust of wind, a groaning I
feel inside as I walk, a stiff
unrelenting sense of reality I
cannot make soft -- this haze
around me an illusion that
does not change the world but
is what I live like, an envelop
I cannot find an escape, bursting
out for a moment only to fall
back into its folds.