POETRY

Threshold

letters blur, the ink stream slows,
I can’t control my weighted lids
as they droop, close.
grip relaxes,
I fall away from the bone

the atmosphere charges.

alternate consciousness,
an habitual escapee set to flee,
alert in me now, expands, leaps and becomes
a willing voyeur on a shaded dimension
entering a stream of parallel incidents populated by
unfamiliar names and voices shocking in their unrelatedness
to anything I profess to know while I’m
swept onto an accelerating maelstrom of a metadata
swirl in an inexorable vortex of oblivion

the clock strikes two

I jump back with a start,
am instantly, predictably present
I curse, wishing I knew they’d jumped back too.
again bound in blood, memory wipe complete,
time has passed, I was gone - asleep, perhaps to you.
captive more than ever before in a universe or two
now buried in a stratosphere I question
whether I am here or ever were
returned to time now passed.

m. landers 2/04