The Agoraphobe’s Dialectic

“One inch ahead/the whole world/is dark.”
from Japanese figures (W. S. Merwin, trans.)

It’s why I don’t go out much, see.
Fear of banging my shins on the
neighbor’s cat, or stepping into
a nest of snakes. The light at the
end of the tunnel is so small it
looks like the end of God’s penis.
A promise, so sue me, I don’t credit.

The Agoraphobe Stuck

A bird pecks at my heart.
Flies buzz inside my eyes.
Looking backwards I fall
over the reasons I needed
to move beyond this, the
life-saving reasons.

The Agoraphobe’s Religious Impulse

“The church is an iceberg.”
Charles Simic

I have titanic spiritual
needs. In the middle of the
night my body twitches
with dreams of an afterlife
where I am calmer,
where I wake to find myself
egoless at last, a man
who has stopped waiting for
the impending collision.

Agoraphobe’s Litany

The door is a mouth.
The foot is a disease.
The sunshine is too hot
for thinking.
Outside is a fence.
Thinking goes nowhere.
The trap is a mind.