i have seen this burning dollhouse too many times these days.

i see images from televisions scattered across white
tablecloths.

i see myself from three angles.  i am always looking elsewhere.  it may reside in unexpected places.  

i see typewriter keys on the inside of my eyelid.

it's a barnum and bailey world,
just as phony as it can be.
but it wouldn't be make believe
if you believed in me.

i don't foresee that happening.  shapes are common.
images within shapes,  i'm not sure.  the keyhole shape is curious.  but you are an unusual person with unusual talents in unusual  surroundings.  we both are.  there is an older woman i knew who is much different than you in every way, and she has hallucinations.  she tells me they are wonderful.  i've had them.  my advice to you is to let them go through you.  there is nothing there.  they are not at all like our other visions.  a doctor here calls the woman's ailment "charles bonnet syndrome."  he said that it is not the strangest thing in the world.

i see you in 1963.  you are in a car with bardot.  like a richard estes painting.  not quite as good.

i'm sure they are hallucinations.  i don't mind them.

the object happens to be not there, that is all.

maybe more improbable than impossible.  i may be having hallucinations.  

circles within circles.  and the visions are impossible.

why are these train windows round?   spheres.

roamed your shoulders.  were you really here?  we were on another train.  nothing else mattered.

we saw our thoughts crossing our faces like searchlights.  my hands...

i remember that our faces were so close when we talked.

we went to budapest.  we took our time.  we had no particular reason.

i remember that we left vienna by train.  we were falling in love.

we looked at the jacques tourneur sky.

we passed a tennis court with a judge sitting by himself.

that night, when the pianist started playing
down the hall,

we bolted.  we tossed our suitcases out the windows.

i met adele on the dark side of the street.

everyone acted as if everything
was of normal size.  nobody ever
gave it away.  all of this made me 
feel small.

we stayed there for forty days and for forty nights.  that is what the bill said.

i do remember the cups and saucers were absurd.  that was the red hotel in vienna.

do you remember that restaurant where everything was so large?

everyone was smaller in those days.  that is as i remember it.

i knew him once.  he doesn't remember.  he was such a small man.

who is that man in the house?  do you know him?

1957.  22:35.  summer.

i haven't seen the poets for hours.  a performance is about to end.

as soon as i am off this ship, i will come to you.
i will free your mind.  we are amateurs.  we'll get used to it.

i have to have a grasp.  reality as we knew it was only a small part of it.  i have to free my mind. 

in a suite above the ballroom,
the woman appeared again, now
with another woman, and then
they both disappeared,
together.