The Measurement of Space

Solange’s Trance, What is Nearest to Us and What is Remote From Us

As I floated

I felt no longer steered

but taken as some target

hung naked from an outer sphere—

I cared nothing for

my rotting hair or swollen flesh

as sea-mist splashed my sponge-like skin

pushing me further where I pleased

into perpetual spins and tide-heaves

I absorbed the nearness of turbid waters

and the remoteness of forgotten lands.

Yet the storm woke me with ecstatic contact

and like a floating particle in the moon’s spotlight

eternalizing the cosmic ebb and flow

as nights passed while stars shone;

I bathed in the Play of the

Deranged, tempest-infused churned into black

devouring red glows, entranced in static wreckage

of body forms bent bow backs

a dreaming where drowned men

sometimes goes down,

I found myself

standing on the stage of

The Two Masks

and as I watched my skin glisten white

refracted through rows of

bobbing balls of eyes

I lifted the string of pearls

above my black curled hair

and felt the pull of

unfathomably mysteries haunting

my soul, fragile organisms reflecting

my inherited defects, the many

monsters of my future’s expectation,

there is always silence before the claps,

like crashing waves, sinking in
the sand of humanly relief.