The masked enter the temple. They live in the liminal space between portrait and intention, and as they float the blackness hums. A flash sparks beneath their eyelids: white, then violet. It gives way to a forest, an invalid crouched on a salt flat, and a void. They train their minds through focus, and the ultraviolet melts their skin. And then they're off. Until they find themselves in the cave, where it moans. They open their eyes, walk to the kitchen, and ravage last night's drumstick.

He sits amid the bustle and orders a drink amidst unfamiliar sounds. It thickens. The people talk like Peanut's parents. Each syllable is a sheet of metal; funny,
how reverberation blocks vision. Each word
reflects his suspicion. The noise encases him.

Their murmur splits his ear, and his room shakes on iron wheels that scream, and he is in a train car. The cars shudder, and like the rattles of iron links
the word "unsound" ricochets in his lobe.

And he is in the furnace. He piles coal into the fire, heaves each scoop into the mouth and blanches his knuckles as he stabs its tongues. Thoughts
of growth combust. Dead wood, dead wood.
He grows faint as each breath only draws in ash.
It cakes his lungs.

A stationary phantom, he stays behind as the furnace treads forward. He shifts on the barstool, and people speak: "unbearable, so hot my hair dried ten
minutes out the shower", "nothing a pint won't
cool". He looks through the window
and views expansive plains.

He returns to the furnace
and it yawns smoke; he grips
his spear; he must escape.

Air Out

You cannot help but hold
the plastic lunch pail, emblazoned
with the whole Sesame Street
gang, even if rips and wear
amputate most,

that you find hidden
in your dead mother's garage,
but you hesitate
when your calluses
meet its latches.

The stench of sardines
that pokes its jaundice-yellow
eyes through the seems,
and beckons you to gulp
and wade in its pool
of sulfur and stale Franzia,
makes your fingers recede.

It is best not to open it here,
but do not leave . Either click
and unseal the lid under a tree,
or shatter it with a bat,
but somehow those memories
must air out.

Often an encounter
feels as if my spine
is vice-gripped
between a pair
of scissor blades
and my intestines
bulge--

how does he look
or mean, inside

--like the sponge
of an incised
cocoon,
and I neither feel nor look
very human.

Death held an ashplant
in place of his scythe,
today. And he hit
me on the shoulder,
rapped my collarbone                  
until it ached,                              
and cried, "Costa Rica                
is for sand crabs!"                        
                                          this chronic leaning
                                          and tendon-bending
                                          makes me feel like my once-ripe
                                          muscles are browning, rusting

           Like discarded apple slices
           beside a hair-strewn caramel
           quagmire of copulating flies,
           my dreams just seem
           unappetizing.

Death then jabbed my sternum
with the cane's sod-strewn
hoof, and reminded
me of the breathlessness
I had hoped of feeling
atop the Urals.

Cataclysmic: he sat alone,
no matter his attempts
at friendliness.

Herons and wagtails flock
the hippopotamus's indifferent
hide, but only the disliked
came to him--

only mosquito larvae
swam in his shallow stagnancy.

And a group fell
by, ticking to its own
balance,

but he could not grasp
the medium that framed
and made them gravitate
so, orbit and revolve together,
like marbles circling
a dip in a tarp
that some person or meme
weighs down.

And does a smile
put us in the same system?
And what makes an idea draw?

And so he sat on,
to thwart company, so that soon
he would not care.

He grew careless,
and his mind lived
in the mountains.

A beckon is like a rustle
of dry leaves or a drip
of dew, and landscapes
refract the same light
as faces.

He left the path
and hiked upriver,
where the resting Gerrid said,
"My kind all dent the surface,
and the unseen lives beneath,
yet we feel them somehow."

And so he dove below,
and made a stir,
revolutionary
to the once-firm plane.