Brian Purcell #11 Hesitate before entering

                     Hesitate before entering

Back from a gig alone past midnight

I chance to see while climbing the stairs

the stars, tumultuous in the clear night air

Someone’s blood or breath out there

being spilled, chemical reactions

unimaginable, star’s breath, sun’s blood

only the void between myself and them

Through the glass wall I see

everyone’s asleep, but the television’s running

I’m still here on the stairs

an organism receiving

the ages’ communion

clouds that are not clouds but vast domains

that would send us into gibberish

if we could speak their names

Before sleeping too I pause for an instant

that reverberates on the stairs

and dissipates in the clay below

Entities claw at each other, breed, break apart.

We are such dreams that cloud the speaking

Through the glass doors I see heads talking

on a smaller screen but cannot hear them

swallowed by glass, an unbreachable gulf.

The stars watch me enter

and are speechless.