When I bend back to gaze at the satellite convulsions, I am an aqueduct for twilit rain. Quite literally I stand in the littoral zone: a lens--no an aqueous humor, my feet on the land below the high-water mark, my hand a glazed waver: hello light-purple lights, hello red spots, you've beaten the stars out tonight but you're struggling with the atmosphere, ain't ye? Over centuries the river became not a river: Lethe's end crept together--self-scavenging sea snake--& the middle filled with water--morphology dubbed it a lake & now the moon swims in it & the moon orbits it & the moon tidally tugs on it. The moon is a satellite in a fit of paroxysm. One minute past, I emptied an aluminum can of dull opiate to the drains to wash down my antipsychotics & then Lethe-wards slunk I. There must be this wire shaking loose in my mind, an unattended firehouse, a spasmodic filament attempting to cool the baby planet but lacerating precious gray matter. Thought leaves no vacancy for memory-- I forget & forget the rules, the thirst an auger, rain only whetting it, I bend & lap some lake up, tongue it, suck the silty mammary right where a light from the firmament meets it. I keep forgetting the rules, a Ptolemaniac with stars & suns circling me; I keep missing my cues, can't arrange the particles moments are made of-- and it's all good!--because when I bend seriously back & peep at the satellite convulsions I am a sluiceway for night rain. If I love at least I love aptly, terminally, like a man who loves his dinner until he's done with it, then settles to the couch to easy pixilated dreams (bounced off, yes, satellites, & beamed into a pale dish). And still, even unfettered by history or hope, the world does not seem shocking--simply something to fly a canvas balloon around, to dig a hole in. To climb into. To allow to fill with water, perhaps it is raining, perhaps you dig below the watertable; it gushes through the dirt; your bath is drawn & in it are drawn (sputniks & stars) maps & charts with which to constellate your body. Connect the dots. A little ladle with four handles--a tiny light strobes in the cup, in hot convulsions of distance, bleats of temporal ignorance, synapse of morse but no code, blood but no pulse, the stream but no mouth or source.
From Radio, Radio by Ben Doyle, published by Louisiana State University Press. Copyright © 2000 by Ben Doyle. Used with permission. All rights reserved.