Midnight Fugue

There is a mosquito that won’t let you sleep.

It’s not a metaphorical mosquito,

But a real, blood-bathing, ear-buzzing bastard,

That resists death, in the form of frantically flailing hands.

You wish for its death, like you wish for your own

Peace. You are safe. You tell yourself: I am safe

But there are those who are not.

Don’t bother yourself with the ugliness,

That chipper inner voice chirps,

The one that speaks to everyone else,

With gentleness, and aplomb,

But to you is just a shrill iteration of all the things

You’re not sure you can ever be.

Peace. Safety. Love. Freedom.

The mantra you invented while hands dug deep

Into your flesh. Can you feel it,

Can you feel it, Can you feel it?

Hands twist into you, but you can only feel yourself floating

Out into the deep waters,

Where there’s no more want, no more loss,

No more fear. Is that freedom?

To be free, you think, you must not care.

You must let go of the outcome,

Like the glass you’re left holding, after the party ends.

Forgotten, clutched too tight.

To let go is to let shatter.

To let fall. To shower crystal, liquid, air, nothing.

To be transformed.

The mosquito swings at your head again,

The bright screen illuminating your face for no one.

Words cannot save him. Words cannot

Protect him from the metastasizing, proliferating

Emptiness that has been laid at your feet, an offering.

A gift. A trap. A hope.

You give yourself to sleep, though the threat still looms,

The certainty of discomfort, cutting across a blackened room.

In the morning, you will be alone again.

It’s better that way, you know.

Your freedom is worth more than a few kind words,

A handful of kisses, blown on the wind,

and a hand that has no right to reach for your own.

And in the end, we’re all just tied up in knots

By the people that try to rope in our unruly bodies and minds

You announce that you need to write songs

And wish you could play guitar

Or make love for an entire afternoon,

By the ocean with windows flung wide

And curtains, white linen,

Flapping against the azure sky

(Writing songs involves less risk)

(It’s easier to accomplish)

(Less exciting)

We settle

It seems

Or we don’t

And we’re constantly wandering,

escaping the fundamental gnawing

Of our intellect against our emotion.

Too quick for the devil to seize.

Writing, too, is a fugue state.

You write: There are shreds of me,

Fluttering about the ether

There are pieces of my desire,

Pulled in undertow

Through subterranean lovesick caves,

Pulsing with the throb of the ocean

I need an audience of one,

It seems, to seek a set of eyes trained on mine

So I can perform for you,

Reflect your desire back to you,

Feel you sink into my flesh,

As if you had always belonged there,

As if you would always remain there

Even if we know that can’t be true.

I still want to hold you, taste you,

Wake up looking into your eyes.

Even if only for one night

Only one day, only one life.

I need to be known, once

To know from inside of you, moving inside of me,

Slowly, immortalizing, crystalline falling

Suspended in time.

A ringing in my ears.

The torment announces itself, and your senses fail you,

Reaching for freedom, in the dark, and finding only its shadow.