Soon I am leaving. Soon
The tinkle of keys, computer's hum, a plane
That bullets through the air, the anxious murmur
Of a talk show broadcast from God knows where
-- What sullen city clogged with smog-choked air -- a dog's yap
Will all fade like the colors on a bleaching t-shirt
Lying down there, somewhere on a dresser, or the fuzzy flicker
Of memory like a badly tuned TV.

These images flicker before the brain, but I suspect
The motor roared before the hum of consciousness began
And will again, after; reality is not,
Like paint dissolving in dull turpentine, such solemn blue
Or freezing red, burning black
To shudder into silver beads, and cloud, and stretch out in threads
Like a tortured patient on the wrack;

But like the shadow of a lightning streak, or
The after-image of an outstretched palm, the webbing
Finger fades, the voices die for me like a low call
Disappearing round the corner, and forever out of sight
Into the reeling calm. Image after image, silence after silence
After voice, all these things fade, replaced forever by another, fresher instinct
While the good past rots.

I search for a timeless out-of-time, where images take root and grow
And bear ripe fruit that always has that melancholy sweetness, tickles tongues,
Pervades the teeth. I fly forever in between the silky clouds at night
While the dark earth gapes like a yawn, the stars are dazzling teeth,
And the moon, like a larynx, sings. I would fashion a garden of forever, scrapped together
From bits of shaggy carpet, wicker threading from a basket, broken bricks
And pages ripped from soggy books. Assorted arms and limbs, a red-veined leaf,
A purple artery on lucid arms, and yellowed teeth: these would be
My roots, spiraling into a forest of purple trees, memories
Tinged in the blue of a setting sky, forever in the golden fall of sun;

But while I sit and write, forever fades. The voices
Echo round and round in a canon of goodbyes, the sea falls
And blasts, a solitary gull wings round, tumbles towards the earth, catches her flight
And a fish, and baffles towards the sky. All my roots are rotten, rotting
While I search for that perfect memory, for a captured light
Whose writing never fades. It is not immoral to miss your life, to flee
The shadows of a rocking globe, to see
Sunset horizons like a rainbow hued archipelago of dappled clouds...
But the ocean of time is devouring misty islands: when the singing fades, it fades
And is gone, and my weak pitched voice cannot imitate it, no, can never imitate it,
Never bring it back.