GASH

 

I indulge in it,

or it indulges in me since

in the silence everything becomes

a bright blend, a lapse where you forget

the stake that distinguishes this from that.

It is like teeth, the grit that I perceive

at night before falling asleep, teeth

cutting into the dark.

They glitter, flash, lash into

the retina of the night.

It can’t be but salt in the end or

its own ghost in a metaphor,

salt that makes Venetian plasters

sooner or later crumble, they paint

and repaint the walls but underneath

the bubbles grow back and transpire,

damp salt mushrooming in its mire.

Or as when my shoes are constrained

to puddle their way onward in the rain,

on a bank of a canal in the dark where

sudden black pools are revealed

in the glimmering arrows of the lamps.

When in the next morning light

on the leather of the damp shoes

a waving line of salt

in its curlicue of froth, mushrooms.

Or the sweat of silence in deep summer

that stings, shines and consumes.

 

That keeps me awake and eventually

accompanies me into sleep.

Sea of a gristle.

Gnawing rhyme.

Life if you like.

The gash we sink in.