i don't like walking in open places or driving in forests when my eyesight blurs

don't like how the pieces blend shift until i don't see right

it's the patchwork haphazard way the brain stitches reality 

puckered seams along the edges of the material image 

runs a fingernail down the thread so it frays—

 

drawn to the paradoxical like am i drawn to the open places

sway to the rhythm the comfort in the things that take it away 

it comes from pain like love or love not real but don’t change

‘cause in the open place the song doesn’t change

 

the human brain puts things in neat little boxes

prone to taking shortcuts conscious and unconscious

if the view doesn’t change pack the photos in neat little boxes

shift them along a march in a day and the parts don’t change

they come half-dusted out of the boxes

 

and my mind is always elsewhere elsewhere elsewhere

swift body in the current down the current of elsewhere but

no stones swaddled like a newborn don’t pull me back it’s warm

i’ve always wanted to know if i could be asleep but still awake

this is the closest i reach sometimes to dreaming 

 

startled the leaf the dream flutters on not asleep i’m still awake

cold in the open places where mechanical parts shift down the image

in the open place the image doesn’t change

and how can an image a place be real if it doesn’t change?