as the salmon spawn

i imagine my contexts as if they were stories

stretch plastic cotton from my pillow case and wash its legitimacy as if it were wool 

it is to insulate and sustain a never-changing state of comfort and ease and space to contain 

as its taste exists to me 

my bladder is full 

i inhale whistles and chimes

the wind, laughing 

a row of hanging songs parallel from the orange wall on the balcony that faces the field Mohammad would kick a soccer ball 

to opposite ends  

and i was first taught the difference between heaven and hell 

at the slaughtered goat in the front yard whose blood trickled down the well our cat leaped into seeking shelter from the pastimes of boys 

only to soak in crimson 

innocence spilt 

at the hands of men with knives 

i imagine my contexts as if they were stories 

so when my actor transfigures into the son within me 

i am parallel to the shore to keep from drowning 

i have energy 

there remains a will 

if nature could affirm her struggle 

we could unify 

unruly weeds would grow over and into me in the depths of a trench 

as if to inherit the void of being unknown 

for the goodness in me

can only be found at the mouth of a channel 

where the current knows strength 

and i am the soft bedrock 

of a natural earth 

it is only the weather that erodes 

my only god is the moon 

i wake up to chapped lips 

half-dead on the rocks 

where i could reach the water 

if i could bring myself to turn over 

if there was courage to see the day 

i am expected in the morning 

the veil is thin

there are flies in my eyes 

here at the gate 

my present transforms into mythology 

where there is light

i am imagined 

where there is light 

there comes a draw 

i keep out the tide 

an act of preservation 

as the salmon spawn