The Night Hole

That rabbit hole down which
you scuttle for the allnight nap --
feeling your stomach twitch
as it reduces the rinds
of dinner to a workable rubble
-- once in that trap,
that cloaca, the mind's
tongue forks, seeing double.

You were thinking signs such as
exhort you in subways and waiting rooms
to chew, bank, shave, express;
at any rate, you were
still straw boss, still factotum
until your retina bloomed
with instant snapshots, blurred
and uncaptioned. Now in that album
on metal cans

without words or camera you are
ballooning in and out of cruel
scenes which go on far
from that snug button-tufted place
your breathing body unclasps in.
Now you are dying with a drool
left over on your face
and come to at morning, gasping,

a caught fish, all juice and meat,
strung up in your own sheets.
The night hole shuts.
Calmer, lucid, revising your obit,
you can forget
most of it.