Dreams About Passports

Does a thought, a comparison

a spasmodic equation

of a cloud and the dolphin I see 

with imperfect eyes in the sky 

engineered by an impetus 

to keep seeing keep noticing

does such an observation

have something to it we call truth

prosper if appreciated? (Does it matter to prosper?) 

Or is it better latent? Does it count 

to anyone in particular

more than one note two notes, three 

of Dexter Gordon Don’t Explain 

wording the same questions wordlessly 

does it matter 

to be understood, or even heard 

once you have wondered 

Does it matter 

and, answering No 

it matters not

to understand matter—

must even such a dismal No 

matter, to a mind that opens once 

or twice upon a time  

matter, to be understood  

or heard or talked about, lived through 

even-if-removed, replaced, or moved beyond 

to still pursue the light 

like the spirit moving in generations

of cockroaches and birds of paradise 

matter that we leave the X we represent 

wide open raw and innocent 

as animals extinct unto power—

gifted ape or auks of survival 

killer species, victorious bacteria 

or real-live aristocrat 

with legal-engineering skills, connections 

and the money that pays you  

so shut up or I cut you 

a long long neck branching 

too far out from safety

consumed like a tree by endless vines  

does it matter 

for peasants of the dead-eyed frenzy 

to look thirsty and alive as the blade falls

and they morph among the histrionic days 

freighted down by oil bills 

and hot hot hot hot August rain 

as blues and beauty incrementally repair 

one slash of creation

and there

as the slave recognizing his master 

slavers over ziggurauts

and the triumph of servitude

dare we celebrate the beauty too—

the strong nose and perfect bone structure 

of one superserious Emily Rosenberg 

her beauty raging 

in my brain like the X 

she too represents, O 

dare I celebrate a feeling 

that wears old now? 

and no longer able

to plead my loveless vortex 

loudly as a howling pack of dogs 

til all that amounts to memory-dunes

admits the desert future 

and the Deluge we knew  

in the beginning 

lies the end of octomesters and cyclops

so happy to be Zero 

and exposed to the real 

cruel totality that radiates 

in which we radiate 

a sad compromise short of all ideals 

drunks drink to forget 

does it matter 

because sometime in the distance 

a woman like you 

and like me

emerging on a distant planet

think just like we do? 

Does it matter that this friendship— 

these correspondences 

of cloud and lover 

lover and beloved 

self and descendant 

Gordon and a listener— 

made through time and race 

and sex geography 

culture tautology

whateverology

exists of a mood gone in a flash 

and too casually for inquisitors alleviates 

the reckoning of coming silence—

and if the answer is yes 

or if it is no 

did we approach something? 

Does my desire 

break my sympathies in time 

and triangulate the man attained of feelings 

and a cloud he faces with a dolphin 

swimming in the stars 

and swim in the stars?

Is this what it feels like to be free?