The sky so soft inside the deafened haze
of illness,
a feverish green,
deaf-and-dumb twilight;
and the muffled sighing of the traffic
after five
just a corrugated drag,
a washboard of humming.
O! this waxy blueness
ruled and cursive lines
uppermost, behind the rigid lace
of a balcony.

This thick deafness-
a blue-green tinnitus, stained
like the yellow dyeing at the horizon-
staining my day,
this pretty yellow obsession
that weeps into every second
like poison dribbled into a pillow-slip.

I would not wish this on myself,
this isolating hum that is my obsession
with you-
I would not choose it.
But, now that my head is crammed full of
its dense tufts,
all I can do is turn inward, mesmerized
by its endless drone.