A book must be an axe for the frozen sea within us.

—Franz Kafka

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I need a frozen sea for this axe... I need to remember something...

but what...I need to remember that space isn't empty,

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it's some kind of field...Particles pop up & then disappear

like those prairie dogs I watched in the desert...

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Sometimes I need a desert...a mountain at sunset

where the old saguaros gather to lift their arms

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to the mystery...I believe in the mystery...Maybe I don't need

to understand much of anything ...What a relief...But still

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the water beneath my feet keeps churning...The past

keeps trying to pull me down like I'm hooked on a line--

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isn't everyone?--by some patient undersea god...

blood in our mouths...So many rooms of memory

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at the bottom of the sea...bedrooms, party rooms, family

rooms, ugly rooms the parents lay in, waiting

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for the end...It's our turn soon...

But don't think about it...Think of the ice

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in space, deep in the crevasses of the moon...

Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto...

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I have an axe for all that...if I could only dislodge it

from my heart...

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