1

He steps off the ladder and limbs
curl up
from the black earth
like branches withered
In hot moonlight
and serpents fly
like hyenas
to a corpse, the paralysis 
of a nightmare
sheathing over
the tree that holds up the sky.

A noise like planets colliding
erupts amid the sight
of a tsunami
to the west approaching
and a voice whispers
from the heavens 
‘permanent brain damage
is a possibility’
and seething gargoyles 
lurch like urban hunchbacks 
behind a thousand years
of dust,
their faces filling the windows,
they croak
as pigeons do
when you need to sleep the most.

2
As if existing between the quanta,
viewing remotely the Cause,
his heartless being filled 
with immortal bliss
imagined and realized 
simultaneously.

Sunrise but
as if painted by an ape,
he never remembers the horizon 
being so symmetrical 
or the trees 
so inviting 
and then the vortex closes and his
game of snakes and ladders
in the afterlife
is over.

The claws of life dig deep
into his eyelids,
cracks the darkness
in half and then 
to shards reflecting
nothing 
of the abyss.