Near and Not Far

The night falls as my eyes open.
Their brown and black orbs shutter
'neath cold snowflakes that flutter
out the darkened sky.
My mind is a child--he licks
the white beneath the street lamps
while the body sprouts hair where it shouldn't
and sees only yellow specks descend.
The streets are silent--the body more,
but the mind screams, fleas, warms, and sings,
scalds red-hot in the furnace,
is plunged headlong into the smelting waters,
kicks and rolls and hardens,
weeps blue steel and confides in no one,
blankly stares into the air,
watches the flakes covering all he knows,
and irresolutely consorts with his end
beneath the blankets, beneath the roof,
inside the sun, hotly disintegrated,
lost to all time and eternity within a hole
in deep space far beyond imagining...
How are we to sleep when every second thought
is of the grave and the stars?
Comfort must lie near, not far.