Because I'm scared, because sound
winds itself around me
like a bat echolocating
my neuroanatomy—I run

through the long list
of World Capitals I know:
Bratislava, Kabul, Windhoek—
Yes, geography will save me.

Land, water, distances traversed
in the folds of the brain
they're scanning, coiled
like metal wires

clanging in the white
esophagus that's swallowed me.
The man behind the glass
knows the spin of my mind's

vinyl: drops a pin where
the stem slips from the skull.
I must escape his peristalsis.
I must walk the streets

of Algiers, fortify myself
in the Casbah quarter.
Why bother?—the sounds
stalk me: I hear the hammers,

I hear the house in the midst
of its cacophonous assembly.
I'm at a techno-rave
in Copenhagen: lights pulsing

to recurrent beats, mapping
the body of a neon dream girl.
I float past a seascape:
salt, sails, and Baltic sighs.

I'm a sucker for sound—
I like to step inside it, or it likes
to step inside me and stretch
like an epoch, like a sunset,

pink sinking into an ocean.
I'm waiting here for my diagnosis
with a mouthful of sedatives
and solecisms, with a mind that's

solid black for these clunkers
to stumble around in.