My sanity is collapsing. My thoughts are like boiling water, my mind is like a raging, turbid sea, and words, words come pouring out, words like raining, drizzling hailstones, chunking houses, grounding the plains in fickle ice. The air crackles, incessant static, and all vision is the snow and fuzz of bad reception. Feeling shudders through me, through a beating heart, through air-brushed skin, through hair and cool and itch; the same dull smell, the same clear taste. I feel like I'm floating in an immense space of clearness. The ever pervasive sense is the sense of time passing, time slipping away like minute grains, and everything is calamity.

Devices break -- TV's, DVD players, computers, the world is all one big heap of broken things. Metal upon corroding metal, foil on crinkled foil, broken, brittle pieces crushing the edges of even smaller and more brittle points. A glaring light runs through everything, or the sapping static electric of light, and even the edges of pure forms are dull, brittle, corroded, and bleeding with rust.

My love comes to me from the desert; a harsh desert, a desert of nothings, a desert of throbbing bodies and the scraping away and tearing of skin and the licking, nursing of wounds, and my love comes to me in the desert, from the desert, bearing a book, a cross, a sign, and while the winds blow, he says, "Take the way of peace, the path of the righteous; be happy and drink from the well hallowed wells where all is clear water, where leaves drift about scarlet in the night, where life is a burning of sacred light." And what do I do in the pure blue sky of his eyes? I spit to the winds, I would leave myself cold, I wrap myself in darkness and ashes and dust. My own personality overwhelms him, settles down on him like a thick, suffocating cloak of smoke, and I can't escape this haze, this horrible haze that clouds over everything, makes the rocks blacker, and shrouds the azure sky and makes everything dark.

When darkness falls I wish I could swim a million miles. I wish it were only myself trapped in the cold darkness of the rushing seas, jagged rock islands poking out of the water by my side, far right and left, but myself, storm tossed and freezing, blown by harsh winds and scattered by rains while always the cool stars above, always the quivering libidinous earth-bound mass below, struggling until my over-taut, grinded grunting muscles give way and I collapse, and the cool waters close over my head, invade my brain and still my breathing throat, my gaping gorge. I am heading for my special isle; swimming through the mass of sea back to my country, back to my home-land. There it's always warm and dark, there the breaths come in hot, soft whispers, there there is darkness to cover me, darkness to blanket me, and everywhere just the cool, warm, soft, pliable, wax-like curving edges to curve me into infinity and cover me with nothing. Finally in the dark and eternal night of unconsciousness, of non-consciousness, I slip into all being and all being resolves itself through me; the nothingness has become all and the all nothing.

Until that moment of pulchritude and consummation, there's only the world of colluding and colliding experiences. The fallen world. The world that still believes the consummation of all matter is God. All matter -- the mass of rolling atoms; atoms pushing in the wind, atoms striking in the void, everything, everything separated but just little specks, tiny little dots of infinite mass, separated by vast distances, the distances as vast as the distances between myself and all others, between me and my boyfriend, the widening gap that I can never feel through.

When I'm with him, when I'm lying with him, lying next to him, I wonder -- can I ever please him? Can I ever consummate his desires? I look at myself, the livid piece of meat that I am; I find no peace in his arms, because I'm always quivering, always rotting, always suffocating under the tenderness of his embrace. I think: is this my final chance for love? Is this my final chance for peace? My desires, my wretched ambitions to write, my desire for the consummations and unifications of poetry, and my labors, all of my labors are interrupted by the stretching of days, the stretching of arms, embraces, and the cold fervor of one heart beating next to another. As if I want to be myself, I want to burst out of myself, but I'm afraid if I am myself I'll lose him. So I conceal myself, I go into a deep shell, I go into hiding because the truth is, it's more important to me to keep him, more important to me to stay bound together in his knot -- just never to be lonely and most of all to be loved. So I have no real schedule and I'm quivering to him live like an uncooked piece of meat. I'm an incoherent jumbled mass of words that don't resolve themselves, words that fit like puzzle pieces with the wrong ends, desires that don't quite combine, contradictory desires, contradictory thoughts; how can I offer this tattered, broken, quivering thing, searching everywhere for unity in books, everywhere for unity in poems, everywhere for unity in art, to someone else, a fragmented decaying dropping collapsing colliding overheaping overfilled overstuffed overmade and united bundle of junk into collusion? I can't mix myself when I'm overflowing out of myself. I want only to escape from my life; I want peace.

But peace is far away; but peace is the crackling of fires; but peace is the darkness of death. When I go to the place of death I'll go to a land where all wrongs are righted; where no longer can I hurt anyone I care about, or break to pieces and shatter the objects and ornaments I most hold dear and love. Every walking, every journey, every moment is a subordinate moment -- subordinate to this great darkness that will bear no subordination. I'm ordained to die, and confused with every waking moment, yet so desperately clinging to this quivering, clinking, roaring, collapsing, rising and falling, degrading sea of shadows and darkness, feasts and flesh.

Love is a great light, love is a great heat, love is something to be treasured with the kiss of red like ripe fruit lips, and something that is so rare and so precious it is a little green-glistening gem, a ruby, a good ripe diamond, or the sweetness of bursting in and through the mouth, a grape. Love drenches through the body and soaks the soul like wine; love make everything inebriation, love pines away always a fire against shadows, always like a throbbing sun against the night. Here is quandary: I who have aligned myself most close with death, I who take good kisses from this dark but comely sister, how am I to love? How am I to join my breast with life's hot breast, feel the heat emanating always from his chest and every limb without some plaguing guilt? I wish I could sail far, far down the Nile into the heated pyramidal rising spaces of Egypt, and then be done in the mounds of sand covering every ground, and bury myself with the wind. But life calls me like the hot sun burning the edges of the pyramids, like the broken Sphinx's nose, well seen, and glowering eyes will not recall me from their gaze. Life is the making of choices, the pouring of decisions like the spilling of ink, and every drop of ink must be salvaged, recombined on the page to make something more than music, less than noise. A seeker of silences am I; I join quiet whispers together into sounds, not wondrous but soft and sweet, cooing like death, but always to be joined to unity of life is a throb and a pain, a continual raping and a birth. Jon, this is my love for you; my love is the birth, the dawning of warm blood rushing to my cock spreading like a light over my body, a light I can't dimiss or even flinging myself against the broad and bursting chambers of my heart resist, and the cist of compulsion bursts, emotion washes over me, and I am bathing in a sea.

Someday when the sun is burning down on my skin and the soft waves coo on the edges of my consciousness and my mind is pliable and soft and melted wax, and my lips have the honey-sweet breath of the dew, their due, I'll think of you and your warm body pressed against mine now; I'll think how I was meant to be a crackling mass, a burnt and gooey, roasted sweet, something to melt and sag and collapse. For only by burning, crackling, flaming and puckering in the heat of life can we yield to death; and only then does time collapse to rinds and lees of burnt, ashes of coffee, remnants and weeds and desert sand. Scatter me to the winds; burn me like my poems, my love, and scatter me to the winds. Blow harsh and cold and cool and leave the endless stretching, blue, and moon-reflected sky so calm.

The sound of bubbling madness; the insanity of a throated pitch; spears heading for enemies' hearts. Meanwhile loud rustling of wind and the quick clash of arms, the thrust of bodies head-long into flight, and far off flowers; a cool hyacinth shudders, curls, and falls by raging streams. The foam flecks the speckled rocks, a butterfly perches on the wetted blossom, licks, takes off. Now leaves rustle, and shrubs weighed down with pregnant berries. Menalcan is playing the pipe, puts down the pans, and with a rugged knife he cuts a fawn from tender bark. The sun is setting near the hills, mixing with the falls in brilliant streams of red and orange and gold, so that the chills are water running down like precious gems, like all silk hems of finely-woven sheens. In the decorated chambers, maidens dance with maidens to the music of the lute that rushes through the rafters and the floors, where hoardes of decorated men all gleaming in their iron mail clink clashing cups and laugh and sup on venison from recent fallen stags, who lay there quivering while the chinking arrow sank into their heavy hide, procuring flowing sighs of fresh and eager blood, while their flesh-stripped bones were left to rot, and the remnants were nourishment for all thick moss.

Virgil, Eclogue II, englished:

For Alexis, beautiful, pastor Corydon was on fire,
-- The darling of their master -- and nor did he get what he'd hoped.
Only in the densest branches, all of shady tips,
He usually came. There these foundless things, alone
Among the hills and forests spewed he forth with studied zeal:
"O crudely Alexis, care you nothing for my songs?
Pity us not at all? For death do you finally think me?
Even now the shadows, and coolness capture flocks,
Now thorny bushes hide even their emerald lizards,
And Thestylis in the rabid (for her reapers) heat
Crushes thyme on dinner with other fragrant herbs.
But with me and raucous (while I lust your steps
Beneath the ardent sun) cicadas resonate the trees.
Amaryllida was not enough for me to bear, bitter rage
And proudly prude? And neither Menalcan,
However black he was, and you as white?
O beautiful boy, exceedingly shouldst never trust to color
White privet blossoms fall, black hyacinths are gathered.
Hateful to you am I, nor do you ask who I am, Alexis,
How rich in flocks, abundant how in snowy milk.
Thousands of my lambs err in Siculian hills;
Milk does not lack for me, neither in the spring or fall, and fresh.
I sing those things as he, habitually, (if ever didst call fields)
Amphion Dircaeus in Actian Aracynthus.
I'm not even so ugly: recently I saw myself on the beach,
When placid by the winds stood seas. Before Daphnin I should not,
In your opinion, quake, if reflections never lie.
Oh! If only it were pleasing for you, with me in found fields,
To live in humble houses, and hunt deer,
And drive their mothers' young with greened mallow!
Along with me in the forests you'll imitate Pan on the pipes
(For Pan first joined together with wax very many reeds
And founded syrinx, Pan who cares for flocks, and of the flocks, their masters),
Nor repent yourself for wearing off by flute your lips:
What would Amyntas fail to do to learn the same?
I have a pan compact of seven different pipes,
Which, as a gift, Damoetas gave me once,
And dying said: "These are your master now";
Damoetas said, while jealous Amyntas watched.
Besides, I have two, unknown in the tucked-away valley,
Fawns, sparse even now with whitened spots,
Who twice a day will dry the teats of sheep; and these I keep for you.
Long since Thestylis begged to lead those off from me,
And will do yet, since you think shit our gifts.
Come hence, beautiful boy, oh! For you lilies in full,
Behold the nymphs bring baskets; for you the shining Nais,
Plucking violets pale and poppies' tips,
Narcissus and flower joins of sweetly odored anise;
Then with wild cinnamon and mixing other suavely herbs
With gentle, little yellow she weaves hyacinth and violet.
I myself will gather white of tender the downy apple
And chestnuts, which my Amaryllis once loved;
I will certainly add waxy plums (for there is also honor in this fruit)
And you, oh laurels, pluck, and you, approximate myrtle,
So placed since you mix sweetly odors.
You are a rustic, Corydon; nor does Alexis care for your gifts,
Nor, if for them most certain, would Iollas concede.
Oh, oh, what did I want for miserable me? With flowers the Austrum
-- Foolish! -- to fight, to cast off wild boars with flowing fountains?
Where do you flee, ah! demented? They live also, gods, in the forests,
And Dardan Paris. Pallas who founded cities
Herself is tenant; to us the trees are more placid than all.
The savage lioness hunts the wolf, the wolf himself the sheep,
And flowering willows sate the lascivious goat,
And Corydon you, o Alexus: whatever floats your boat.
Look, the bulls take up again on yoke the hanging plough,
And the sun doubles rising shadows as it falls;
Nontheless, love burns me: for what bounds hold back love?
Ah, Corydon, Corydon, what dementia has seized you!
Half-shorn your leafy vines grow on the elm:
Might you not something more worthy, of which use needs,
With pliant branch and supple thrush prepare to weave?
You will find -- if this one forebears -- another Alexis."

Virgil, Eclogue 1

M. Tityrus, reclining 'neath the shade of a spreading beech
With tenuous oat you meditate the sylvan Muse;
We flee the edges of our country and leave the dulcet fields;
We are fleeing our homeland -- you, Tityrus, light in the shadows
Instruct the woods to resonate your lovely Amaryllis.
T. O Melibeoeus, a god granted us this peace
For ever will he be a god to me, and ever will a lamb,
Tender from our flocks, his altar stain.
He, as you see, allows my cows to wander, and myself
To play those things I wish on rugged pipe.
M. I do not even envy, more admire; everywhere, wherever I go
The entire country quakes. What's more, I prod my flock
Forward for ills; and her, Tityrus, I lead with aches:
For here among the dense hazels, just now twins,
The hope of a flock, ah! -- she left them on the naked rock.
Often this evil to us -- if not for a wandering mind --
I recall had predicted an oak, heavenly struck.
But nevertheless this god, who he is, give, Tityrus, to us.
T. That city which they call Rome, Meliboeus, I once believed
-- foolish I! -- alike to this our own, to which we are often accustomed,
Pastors all, to dispatch tender kids from our flock.
So dogs are like to cats, so mothers their young
Thought I -- to confound great things with small, this was my fault;
Truly Rome raises her head as much above cities
As cypresses will turn their nose up at the fragile guelder-rose.
M. And what was, for you, the so great cause of seeing Rome?
T. Liberty, who late though she was, respected a laggard;
After the beard fell from the razor more whitely,
She paid respect all the same and, long overdue, she came
After Amaryllis had us, and Galatea left us.
For this I will admit: as long as Galatea held me
Neither hope of liberty was nor care for savings.
How ever many victims you wish came out from my holdings,
However much rich cheese was pressed for our ungrateful town,
Not ever weighed down with copper would my palm come home.
M. Amaryllis, I had wondered why, grieving, you would call the gods,
For whom you left his apples to hang on the tree;
Tityrus had left. The pines themselves, Tityrus,
Even the fountains, yes verily these trees would call your name.
T. What could I do? Neither could I loose my yoke
Otherwise nor elsewhere come to know such present gods.
There I saw him in the resplendence of his youth, Meliboeus,
To whom our altars fume each year for twice six days.
There he gave this answer first to my request:
"Pasture your oxen as before, my sons, and raise your bulls."
M. Fortunate old man, so the fields will remain yours
And however much you need, whatever you want of bedrock
And all this chalky pasture overgrown with slimy thrush;
Nor will unaccustomed fodder tempt those laden with birth,
Neither will the ills of neighboring flocks infect them.
Happy elder, here among well known streams
And sacred fountains you will capture the coolness of shade;
Here for you, as always, from the neighboring limits
Hedges that feed with salictian flower the Hyblean bees
Will often coax you to sleep with soft whispers;
There below the high cliff the hedge-trimmer cries to the heavens,
Nor meanwhile will the shrill wood-pigeons, your delight,
Nor the turtle-dove cease to moan on airy elms.
T Therefore first will winged deer graze in the clouds
And channels abandon fresh fish on the beach,
First overwandering both of their boundaries either the exiled
Parthian will drink from the Arar or the German from Tiger,
Before the god's face is forgotten from our heart.
M. As for us, others, from hence, will reach thirsty Africa,
And some will call Scythia and the rapid clay's Oaxen home,
or dwell in Britannia, deeply divided from all the globe.
How will I ever again, long from now, seeing the pauperish edge
Of my homeland, and the sod gathered roof of my hut
After so many years admire my kingdom, my crop?
A good for nothing soldier will keep these sweat-grown fields,
A hawk will tend this turf. Behold how civil war incites
Civillians' cares: for this we sowed the fields!
Plant, Meliboeus, your pears, now place your vines in line.
Come, oh mine, once happy flock of sheep, let's go.
Nor will I, after this, couched away in a green-grown cave
Watch you hang far away on the thorny rocks; no,
I will sing no songs; nor where I lead, my flock
Will you pluck the flowering clover or feed on weeping willows.
T. Nonetheless here, with me, you could stay this night
Above the ripening green: for us there are succulent pears,
Chestnuts soft, an extravagance of pressured cheese;
But look, far off the highest city tops already fume
And greater shadows glide down from the hills.