be(d)side

so that when I say it’s in me like bluest ice

it’s that I lean back at night and its chill spiders through my brain

in capillary-like, axon-and-dendrite-like, ink-on-paper-like fashion

wrapping and seeping, coiling and bleeding

staining me and defining my boundaries

which are in so many dimensions--

imaginary, far, now, real, here, then

tossed into all realities

like splintered hairs

scattered, free, not connected to one another--

at once that I am enormous, eternal

hurting with yearning, stuffed

into a moment, restrained, confined

so that when the blue melts out through my eyes

and my esophagus strangles a slashing red volume

please know that it is nothing but the pain of being,

like compressed air,

locked in me and some of me rushes out

so that when I

explode

it will be that slabs and slivers of me are sprayed

all over the world

so that when I am mute and untouchable to you

it will be that I’m.