Stout Weather

Body slightly weary, glowing again
after rolling in the blankets
for the four-thousandth time.

Pour a black glass of stout,
sit by the fire reading
Derrida on Artaud and think:

the scurrying whirlwinds
of isolate noise, light, action,
children or frenzies, are like

stormfronts looping across the western
skies, unfolding from the coasts of thought,
occluding my attention.

The fire spits, the stout settles,
cacophony inside, sheer chaos without:
the noises cancel out against themselves -

these blusterous orographies accelerate
becoming human; reality bestows
on these shifting permanances

a recognition and the heart
fills up again. Doors are blowing shut:
I run to wedge them wide.

A strange world I've blundered
into, the pages of the rulebook
swirl around my head in a tempest.

The truths we uncover with respect
to ourselves force some dissemblance
if survival is to be a card on the table.

I look at the walls, the children, inspect
the terracotta of the floor.
The fire is warm. I drink my stout.