TRICK BAG

It's an archipelago of angst in a sea of selfishness--a constellation of crazy.  That's what it is.

The poetic line would then harken to a ship on the sea or a space vessel floating through the maze, regarding each in turn--the beauty of her verdant shores, or the gentle curves of her horizons, as the sun alternates from wink to nod.

Better a telescope, eyeing from a distance.  Bad enough to have the light streaming into his eye but at least voluntarily; to then have the option of looking away, sitting in the locked observatory, in the cool room with no door, except in the ceiling, which gapes perpetually open, the shaft and lens staring out and up at the emptiness.  Oh, if only it were truly empty.  The lights in the darkness impassively yet demanding still the attentions of the amateur astronomer as he scribbles frantically to figure the math of their motions.  Is it gravity or dark matter?

In a dream, curled on the metal floor, the light from the heavens streams out of the wrong end of the telescope and curls a cat-tail out the ceiling and down the side of the wall.

He climbs out.  In the dream.