Rimless: A Portrait of Sleep

It was a different dawn.
Outside, colors ripened
Beckoning a day of blackened,
Forgotten memory.

Pictures formed framelessly –
Locations rushed, jumbled,
Faces flashed, some followed,
Disjointed flesh and bone.

I knew the bricked walls of our eroding castle.
I knew the marble stairs of that quiet chapel,
Knew the grounds, both visited and unvisited,
Compounds and courtyards, corridors that continued
Through the delirium.

And now the palette of a new twilight glistened.
Blood warm in a goblet, a sky lavishly inked.
Another courtyard, a mosque, a street, a channel
About to tip over, and the spectrum shall spill
Through a continuum.

Images, phrases, form
Were strangely socketed,
Neatly wrapped, then revealed
Like syntax that ordains

The timing of tenses.
Territories unmapped,
Categories confused
Yet I traced momentum.

The unmindful iris
Can compose such colors,
Can call on the unseen
To seek resolution.

The paper is still white.
Skies knock at glass windows.
Vision blinks, then dwindles.
This blindness is too bright.

9th Muharram 1428
29th January 2007.