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POETICS OF TRAUMA

The fast expense of the middle evening
Yields a quiet that we stride into, feeling
Only the pound for pound dockside restlessness
A full heart expresses when we feel alive.

In this quiet or one like it, sleep
Turns the pages of the collected comics
Until one so backlit with anguish contorts
Us, just by graphics! and we, or rather I

Jump up. The situation, unmentionable,
Is fucking with me. And it's precisely when
I most need to be proactive that I long
To clean house, file papers, bake bread

Or simply collect my energies unconscious.
No, as they say, dice. Singular: die.
Eventually, next to you I return to rest
And get back up, staring and ready.