By Bryan Thao Worra
You are a mist for me, you thing of nevers known.
I weep your nameless name in my mind,
Your gaze a lightless inferno within a midnight hurricane.
You are a mist for me, you, beneath your shadow crown,
Thoughtless as steam between decrepit cogs and wind.
Trees make ready for autumn.
This city: Is that old burning Rome or Vientiane?
Clouds are savaged within the darkness,
Street lights always flashing to imagined jazz
Over concrete sidewalks, the smell of acid rain.
You are a mist for me, you, oceanic, absent
As a page in the Book of the Dead,
An asylum made of rivers and paint,
Howling, crawling without destination or intent,
A mouth of subatomic questions fluid
In its variations of impossibility
No mere human eye can taint.