999 rooms

Room 110 is a garden of fire.

a cube infused in purple light
and us and all knots unknotting

Do you remember
ozone fireflies at the distance
in the darkness of our closed eyes,
the guessed silhouettes
of two hollow casings touching;
a chemical hypotesis
of peace, laughter
from the other rooms, the conceit
of thinking we were something good

This one room is a filthy hut,
but there is dry bread inside, and wolves can’t enter.

I want you to come to my land,
yes that dry backyard that merges
with the badlands we’ve got here;
to come and move some rocks about,
dig a hole for the fire –
lines for rainwater to run;

to search the dug earth mounds for stones
and stack them into round walls;
to let fire loosen the soil,
heat the water which makes us sweat;

to leave a hole on the roof,
let a wall collapse by snow;
teach me back a cosmology
weed my convulsions away
resynch my line with a death
no different from crop or winds

He took yoga lessons
but desire came back
He drank ayahuasca
but desire came back
He sat under a tree
but desire came back
He moved in a lighthouse
alone in the small room
of the beacon keeper
a pencil and paper
spermacetti candles
grog bottle and a bible
but desire came back
Luckily, he reckon’d,
maritime life’s never
short of robust hemp rope
and the beacon is high.

– I like your room. It’s cute. You are cute, too.
– It is a hotel room. It’s as cute as all the rooms of all the hotels of this chain.
– Is 104 your lucky-lucky number?
– It’s just the number I got from the receptionist. Your name was?
– Emerald.
– From?
– London.
– Of course. I mean, before London?
– Bangkok.
– I see. So your dream is to get back to Bangkok as a star or something?
– I will never return to Bangkok.