A dog is running after its own tail.

 

One minute a man sees 

the next. He is awake again.

He is always waking.

 

It’s like this:

a glass full,

then empty.

No evidence of drinking.

 

In sleep there might be peace;

a longer narrative, sea air.

 

Holding a piece of chocolate,

turning it over and over,

each time new.

 

Is there life on Mars yet?

People are getting more cancers.

 

For thirty seconds, a story

from a TV show: the world 

has stopped. He is still 

moving. The eyes become

vessels for no one, an eclipse 

of the spirit. Unblinking,  

he waits to pause.

 

Semantic (write it down):

Thomas Edison. Eudemonia. 

Seven Wonders of the World.

The Pi to the 13th Decimal.

 

Episodic:

The first time he meets his wife.
It was raining like today.

He has forgotten the taste of rain.

 

Procedural:

What the body desires

1. to waste

2. to take in

 

Briefly, lucid, metaphorical:

a pebble stuck in the middle

of an hourglass. An empty set.

 

Implicit:

Pin-pricked, the immediate

withdrawal of the hand.

 

Emotional:

He will refuse to be

touched.

 

Infantile:

Bottomless

 

The dog always rushing

to greet his master

even when gone

for mere minutes.

 

Nothing better than 

[This moment]

Better than nothing

 

She brings him his piano sheets

and he could see with ears

the budding of a flower in full

bloom before it fades, unfolding

all at the same time

 

he and his wife are on their first trip

together: playing footsie in the sand,

the wind making her hair wild with dance,

the ruby pale swimsuit over a skyless

sun. Being, not suspended, breathing

 

the earliest beyond language:

how can I remember what I had

no words for? They are not enough

to describe her scent. In music,

a rest. In joking, cease the day. 

 

In seriousness,

the only present is lonely 

now. 

 

His mother has passed a decade ago. 

A pebble is inside a shoe. To forget

you once mourned, the hour must be

re-turned again and again.

 

For all one knows, 

in those spaces, 

is a God.