Conscious Streams

The streams were bickering with each other, running and chanting unbearably

I felt.

There was too much motion and the volume was rising, buckling and smothering

Me, foot to thigh, I thought

I’m drowning.

And rolling downstream, wondering if there was anything purer than the pink

pasture of the sky which softened everything that evening.

There was the dank hair suspended lingering and loose by the ears,

framing them like cuffs

On a wrist, rotating listlessly. 

So many people flowing into one another, meeting, fleeting, missing, passing,

Rearing, hearing,

Listening.

Barrels, I think.

Randomly pinning each other against the bed and bursting forth again in shock,

Shuddering.

Gasping, on the cusp of quivering banks and coughing up

Bullets, or pellets, or lungs,

Soft and billowy in the thrusting breeze.

My hooks snag on currents, upper-cutting and

Waking the hairs on my long arms, each one of them a lead,

All going nowhere but dashing instead

On rotting sodden reeds.

We rub up against one another the way smoke bristles heat.

It is cold and I drift on,

In conscious crackling speech.