[the projectionist]
[lyrics: wagner]


four am. outside, an orchestra of storms.
waking to familiar phantom warmth, then autumn chill informs
my reaching arm searching for the contours of the missing form.
sardonic math; the pellucid grasp of this bed's too newly empty half;
only figures traced of what these dreams
can recreate in less corporeal space.

I can still undo one hundred mistakes here in the not-awake.
appeal the laws of relativity; take the last year, scissors and tape.
and try to fix this diaphanous relationship before it turns back to shit.

argue the last nights away, to trade for mnemonic gray.
now a wretched 'what if' reel in my brain,
a futile but thankful distraction from dull pain.

what if I had listened better? and hadn't been so self-absorbed?
and hadn't been so paranoid of growing old and growing bored?
what if I had had perspective? hadn't wished that there was more?
what if I had seen this as a partnership and not a chore?
I signed the line; I wanted peace. The parchment burned, and I was released.
Now I've got all the time I need to reminisce regretfully.

A knot split in two's all I ever gave to you.
To myself I stayed true; and found out I'm not such a worthy cause,
and you'd agree now, wouldn't you?

all my nights, all these hours spent engaged in picking out
the subtle sounds of silence, as if to translate some quiet sign,
like mellifluous whispers in the midst of raining nights,
or maybe just the branches scratching out a random pattern on the roof
that doesn't mean a goddamned thing.
there was a time we laid in bed and dreamed and wished and contemplated
a realm of possibilities, and passionately thanked the architects of infinity.
these days the only recurrent wish
is to lose my knowledge of physics and calculus,
and any other science that reminds me that time
is a rigid exercise in lineality.

I only care for surreality, where sleep unfetters me from logic and reflexivity.
And memories acquire a three-dimensionality.

And I give thanks to the projectionist,
who's such a perfectionist that I can forget for a moment it's only a movie.


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