I feel a nessness
and it grows
in color and size
until I can no longer sit
obediently at my tulip
table in my boiled shirt
and my bursting polish
counting my blanks and fews
until I leap up in eight
thousand uncalculated motions
one more jagged than the next
like a fistful of weapons aimed
at getting nothing done
in a subject clouding over
and come to a momentary sill

I feel a nessness
and something is ready
towards the core of it
to be drawn out and placed
into vials and a network of paper strips
marked with fine tip instruments
and presented before a court
that is tasked with determining
the weight we beat upon each other
and the burden on the air and small
creatures that must be, copper ounce
by ounce, lifted by the uptick
of our sternums, mid-haul
the troubling
vapors filling a repository
ordinary sound embalms us inside

I feel a nessness
but what to do with the exchange
of funds required to numb our
erosion, the late-night fidget of numbers
hemorrhaging into a surrounding white
I went into the woods with some friends
we built a fire with nutritional pamphlets
I came out a movement of bright spots
pressed to a retreating shadow
the light on the little bush
at the edge of the property
made it look or seem to shake
witnessing the feelings of others
in the heat’s color, a jealousy
developed bluely—toxic little center

I feel a nessness
I never arrive and nobody 
tells me a thing
as if I could be more arc than stamp
a platter with scented branches
smudge at the tip of thought
the creaking dock from which
the boats of me sail off
fine folk, ghosts, friends,
I ask for delicate activation
I need it to live and breathe, to go on
to leave. How do you know you know,
you know? I have no more room
to lay down in this life. This light 
on my hand becomes my hand