I can never sleep anymore and I've watched all the stupid comedies I can think of and reread every book on my shelf too often to even contemplate another try, so there's not much else to do but lie in bed, adjust the covers and try to race my thoughts to sleep. I usually fail.

apart from wishing i could dream of these always,

here is something new and not very exciting

(truth be told, it's quite derivative, but i'm trying not

to fall too much in love with postmodernism)

profound and Latinate the words are coming

life:

the word is empty, trite, passé.

a portrait of a portrait,

the details lost in the faded paints.

a biological construct:

heartwaves, brainbeat -

reduced to the most basic functions,

it soldiers on in trenches and on sidewalks.

maybe old dictionaries

that smell like rusty water

hold the meaning to the words that fill our heads

and library books

with magnetized spines and scoliosis

open to the pages hasty fingers plucked at,

the passages adolescent dreamers underlined

eight- nine- ten-word sentences

of sympathy and regret

as defined in language, life is simply

another four-letter word (two consonants, two vowels)

as defined in living, life is all

but some nights driving blind down the denim freeway,

overpasses humming,

clinging to the sky,

shading the cement bandages

that stripe earth,

burned and blurry with the vestiges

of wisdom,

well,

the moonlight on the water:

maybe that's it.