Driving into dawn
The world is everything that is the case.–Wittgenstein
But what is that? How is a case? And ... what of what is not...? Your stated silence?
When I wake I am drivingand forwards at last at leastand shattering sounds aren'tescaping me and my thoughtsstop lurching like animalsSteering the last few cornersslowly through a small town: its dark main street bereftlike an old church flowerlessin Lent______________Somethingwhitens my peripheral visionthen is gone The buildingshave lost pub-brawl awningsare head-butted and leaningSeveral people stand half inthe gloom half in blacknessThey are half-cards the half-watch not quite noticing as Ipass________I learnt to drive atseventeen I've been drivingthirty years For the first timeI know what I'm doing I amnot going to be judged I hadthought to stop here but nowI keep on put a roundabout
behind me and I drive westall light gone except my poorheadlights considering a roadthe texture of dead a bad ideaof dead This stoney bitumenslump-shoulder leprous skinThen indifferently up a gearand gone_________The flecks of bloodI saw briefly lit by street-lightsthe red of intent too dark tosee again Uphill upnight downVibration a low stammeringfrom the left rear tries to tellsomething I can not will nothear _________Death is different at nightThe sound it made the lurchingLost as I was it can't be I'm losthere in the present tense I amlost in driving________________If not thenA cool light we gently call dawnenters the tree tops and so entersme I am entering the next worldCluster-bombs of birds go off inthrees Bird-song bird-sight bird
Deception
These are my tricks.
And if I am___inside its placement___this is the perfect photograph of stillnessits composition classical___ its colours sit___ its light is set to body temperature.
Shadows in a room___are nothing to the five strong surfaces of light:arms of chairs in arcs___horizontal water-light lake-ing the table-top.
Unless I am looking___unless I am noting this brightness___ itspossibles___my muse is sleeping a face of Brancusi marble.
But look___ the blood pressure monitor is silvered___and Cartesian.___It waits.___My blood is invisible___ impossibly quiet.
The upper surfaces of forgotten apples are wrinkled and whitedoughnuts of apple-light.___My glasses on the table are blind.
But each lens is the same:______a window and a street lamphang upside down___they bulge in the black frames like art.
...
No no enough of this.______The phone is ringinghere in my head.______Answer Answer.______ It sayssomething else is happening______not thislayered light and language stuff.______This___ and this___ and the mind.______Un-able to resist___ being___ solipsist.______Something is arriving.___ Rips at the faketexture we are___ language is___ the surfacesand rips___ at___ tries to return from