The poetics of space

A house that is not my house. A bed that is not my bed. A soap that is not my soap. An eight-point compass with the directions rearranged. A globe that is not my globe. A fistful of waxy colored candy that is not my fistful of waxy colored candy. A sense of longing that is not my sense of longing. An ice-chip fisheye that is not the playing marble of my wayward youth. An orange peeled on a plate. A needle that is not my needle. A crooked door that is not my crooked door. A hush that is not my hush.

My biggest problem is these lyrical limbs, doctor. They're forever tangentially stretching, unfolding to encompass the expanse of one discrete space, yet always forgetting that even in the narrowest of confines, there exist hairline fissures deeper than ocean trenches, garbage pails more cornucopic than banquet halls, viscous stains more commodious than the cosmos. And always always always, at the moment of maximum contact, in the cradling embrace of the wood and plaster nook in the fleshy, fibrous crook, there's that rough slap from the back of the turned-away mirror, like the reddish blackness of the inner lid. You might say it's the place you can't see that you see from, (-- though you could say that about the overexposed negatives of someone else's vacation photos), the point at the fulcrum that ensures the pivot of the hinge, (the double-blind taste tests of someone else's dreams...) the desperate jump that proves the paltry surmountability of the abyss. (A door that is not a door to a house that is not a house.) I guess you might say that's the place I've been looking for, doctor, through the endless tessellated refractions on the right side of the mirror. Help me find it. That elusive blind alley where sight begins.