APERTURE PUNCTURE

I let the shutter wag its own finger—
this reduction of muscle-letting—
my face flushes down the train

& when the meat-red stigmata encloses,
the camera is gaspingly gassed, yet still
a reflectable mouth, breathing

like a language inside the aperture,
like fingerprints upon the per-square-inch
sky. All of the alien passwords

in the world couldn’t hold a candle
to this mysterious density. A self-distorted
image overlaps into Dark Matter.

What matters are ancient places,
slogans you don’t name-drop but think of,
like atom bombs in the mammoth mind;

a kind of “cruel optimism” is a hidden planet
of the grapes, so much wine, purple-red
plumes, or plums. It’s enough to make you feel

tinier than tiny, microscopic. Here comes
the Regret Patrol! I take my camera out
to photograph a possibly infinite thing.

I dreamt last night that I was holding
one of my ears & I was bathing it.
Close-up of an ear, Meddle. Close-up of

a tear, invisibility. Stepping on plant matter,
the limbs in this forest hang like stomachs.
I’m an alarmed clock, a morning commute

is all people think about nowadays.
Debits, debt limits, & a mocha sucked back
by this girl beside me who sighs & sighs,

asks me to watch her stuff & before walking off, says,
“nothing will happen, but you never know”—
I smile & agree, because who knows when one

may end up having to eat out of a wooden bowl
or end up eating one’s own hand, or fully losing focus
in the mental Rubik’s Cube of spirit-bouncing

hollowness, vapor trails to follow, eroding landscapes
to sink your feet in to, a piper at the gates of nowhere
humming through wind-“pipes”—singing brings

relics of the past through a wormhole; singing can
conjure up dead dinosaurs & dead relatives through
a maze of tulip wood, piñatas smashed not for gain

or candy or a prize, but simply for the act, like a boxer
that practices with the aggression & temperament
of being in the ring, when he’s merely in an empty room,

arms in flight, the punching bag sacrificing itself.
I’m being plucked from a street of future images
like a homeless man in reverie thinking deeply

about his childhood—fairytales dreamed up,
Ophelia sinking like the Titanic. What does that
represent? People saying “thank you” in a sarcastic

way, dragging out the word: “Thaaank you” in
that particular tone of voice. I’m creating my own
Reality & you should, too. Watch, then, as you

notice, out of nowhere, a scrap of heaven land
on top of you, like an Ice Bucket Challenge
gone completely wrong.