Rivers, Lamps, Insects

Rivers, Lamps, Insects

Rivers,
lamps,
insects control
darkness
with their
white voices.

Their whistles
resemble
widely scattered
shards
of childhood
overflowing
the brain
this August evening.

Night
rubs
its blue shoulder
against a white fence.

My soul
is an egg;
crickets
tap
its enamel
consciousness
while air-conditioners,
exhausted,
asthmatic,
slough
the skin
of dead thoughts.

The insect
mantra
forms
a silver eye
fit
for drowning
or exchanging
bones
in the
panic
to breathe
one expansive
breath
of genuine solitude;
steam
rises
from a river
of mercury
flowing
beneath my spine.

Alan Britt

Posted over on Eleventh Transmission