Robinson Learns to Separate #2

Mr. Robinson Learns To Separate #2
        (After Kees)

It starts
in the morning--the sun--
unable to shed
light on much of anything--
as if it weren't already of
the aether,
far beyond the earth,
setting 
and re-setting itself on fire.

So much of life is merely self-reflexive--
I feed myself (sporadically, at uneven intervals)
and late at night
I think (myself)
into the rocky shallows of 
the dark lake
some exits up the interstate.
Thus to 
lacerate
(infinitive)
is just that--
ongoing, too deep to bleed--
a series of self-induced
wounds no one would notice,
or care to see.

The grim
reality is the clarity
exhumed from a body
(just beneath
the last, cracked right rib)
as it bolts upright
at nothing there--
and later,
even with the light on--
still nothing,
nothing still.