and then, one day, the clouds aren't so low, and field mice scamper where wild pigs used to be. six days and counting 'till four guaranteed days of sun, even if it rains, even if it thunderstorms there will be nothing but sun.

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i had dreams last night of ineptitude and beration. it began with using the wrong sponge to clean the counter and ended with a baby dead from dehydration, mouth twisted and open, as if waiting for water. there was hope though, as there usually is, and i lifted my shirt and offered the baby my nipple. it came alive again for the milk and everything else seemed almost forgotten. i woke up then and despite what had been a dark night both inside and out, the first thing my awake mind noticed was birds singing right outside my window.

nothing but sun.

at least the headache's gone.

(i thank you, kind sir. you are a gentleman and a scholar. i am a spider, no, a butterly.)

i was reading lisa jarnot last night (ring of fire) and had one of those damn how did i read this and not see how f-ing good it was moments.

ring of fire sports a midsection of madness -- the i, just like my i, morphs and twists and suddenly someone is on a phone and then is daylight tattooed and just like that where was the i ten poems ago?

(i) identify with the problem, as with her solution (it doesn't exist, so don't pretend). the i is fascinating. ask descartes, heidegger, ashbery, broks. ask them all. we should be bored by now with all this me me me (only not object, direct or indirect, but subject, i i i). but we're not. because though we may know the source (neural networks, the great grey mass) there is still a mystery of translation. grey mass then thought/feeling/action, then the memory of thought/feeling/action, then self or conglomeration of thought/feeling/action with retrospect. (i)

that the i is imagination is the mystery, what keeps us going back to it, as an intellectual exercise yes but also as an obsession, an addiction that greets us in the morning (what was that dream? i'm hungry. etc., etc.) as we are reminded (could we forget) that we are alone with our voice, even if we wake up next to another person. even if we roll over and tell them our dream and that we are, in fact, hungry. even if they had the same dream. even if they have the same hunger. we're still moving outside of ourselves, meaning we had to first acknowledge that we are inside of ourselves. that's the natural state. shanti shanti. that, i think, is what makes us fear death, the silencing of our i voice, of the fanasy closest to us (that we exist, followed shortly by, that we exist and we love or we exist to love, i'm not sure which).

and then i think it's funny that miss jarnot wrote her book in the same city, on the same streets, as i find myself writing my own poems. i wonder if our respective imaginations meet each other, out of time, on brooke or hope or over the river, and if they do, do they pass by each other, invisible, wordless. if they open their mouths to speak and then remember they have no mouths, that they escaped the great grey mass and have been floating, insubstantial, ever since.

again, cloud. this time sans agitation, but sporting a flashy new heaviness. bring an umbrella today, all you across the globe and down the mountains. there is a good chance i'll rain on you today.

délire de negation. delirium of negation. one woman believes herself to be dead, a result of the rotted state of her internal organs. anther woman believes her right arm to be missing. a man tells his doctor that his body is altogether gone, all that remains is his voice in this world. he is, he believes, immortal. some claim to smell their own rotting flesh, others feel worms crawling through their skin. also called cotard's syndome. aetiology unknown.

i wish there was a reverse cotard's syndrome, wherein a dead person refused to acknowledge their death. of course, that would require brain function, which, as a dead person, they would not have -- in which case, they would be right and not dead at all.

we are such funny creatures. i wonder sometimes if i were to wake up and look in the mirror and see a goat or an ant or a five year old child staring back at me, if my first thought would be, oh, i must have a tumor or brain swelling, or if i would just accept what i see and go about my day trying to reconcile my new self with what i remember to be my old self. if i would try to go to school, hoping that no one tried to milk me on the way, or step on me with their boot, or kidnap me and hold me for ransom. my guess is the latter, not so much because it seems the rational thing, but it seems the most common reaction from people with a tumor or brain swelling. we believe what we see, we always have. today, then, i woke up and saw myself, sheet line across my forehead, slightly swelled mouth, half shut eyes, and said, yes, yes, this is you this is me we are the same, the world is just as it should be, just ignore the elephants belly dancing in the shower. everything is fine.