THE HANGED MAN

You'll be still in bed, teeth
bloody, lids taut
over the contours of your peeled-egg eyes and
you'll get that
falling feeling
you sometimes get
when you are still in bed and
your body forgets about itself.
Miles will rush vertically
past your ears.
Your fingernails will trowel.

You will tell yourself nothing
has happened, just your brain
losing its equilibrium for a second,
but you will feel displaced,
hanging floating somewhere in
between your bed and the floor,
and you will remember suddenly
sixth-grade insomnia,
imagining you could feel
the world turning beneath you,
great gears grinding.

Time zones away, people will be
swimming, going to movies, mugging each other.
And you will be here,
uneasy on your square feet
of earth, and what if gravity will forget
about itself and you and
the lava malt
beneath the surface of it all will
become one?