about 1979
I have felt very happy (now that the vacation is before me); now I have
gotten stoned, and I suppose I should have not, for I have suddenly realized
my most extreme disorientation 
and closeness to insanity and despair
How tenuous a normal existence is, how much it only depends on insulation.
In the world is a powerful potent scent,
a charm sweet sleepy and captivating, that if we only saw it once,
would listen all eternally; torn tripped away from anything we hold
worth attaining, any custom 
we've sometimes found reassuring, wiped clean away, 
bare to the cold definition of the wind.  
And so the sailors have fared so long that their salt-splashed faces are only
seamed with the memory of the wind; 
beneath the slightly wrinkled wrap of old skin is no knowledge of the origin,
only the filmy innocence of sun-dried dust.  
Desert, cleanly baked, cleanly scorched by an 
unsleeping sun, the very antithesis
of consciousness, in simplicity and calmness
of intent.  
The sailors did forget; in a morning faring farther south than they'd ever been,
heard the compelling rumours of a siren-song;
a wind wiping on the rocks, 
the clean definition of the rocks;
compelling lustrous black shadow waiting, singing 
for a mind to fill their crystal-cleanness; and perhaps the sailors
heard the rumour of the feeling of 
those rocks, hungering for their consciousness;
the siren-song of a mind's own knowing, it is one, 
is a rock, and perfect.  
The sailors feared the bareness
of the crystal-cleannes; the pain a crystal must feel,
rubbed harshly on another rock, far harder than it,
uncleanly cut and jagged
on the surface.

And so they put wads of cotton in their ears and heard the song far away,
where it could be listened to with pure objectiveness; 
they analyzed the music, 
heard the intervals,
and saw its outlines cleanly cut on muted unreflecting
white paper; 
saw the vague translucent shadow of it, 
as a ghost must see the world
called by all the sucking emptiness inside its head; and said it was all 
worth nothing, really not a song written by a talented person, and that they
should better die in the boredom; somehow smoke and sputter off
a candle burning down its vision fading
its smoke so very dense, 
the shell of glass confining it is paling, 
from the confusion outside the candle perceives
some shadows moving, drifting languidly, shadows paling merging
in a muted brown duskiness,
shadows faintly slipping down,
melting off the thickly smoky
glass.