Floorboards (Revision Three)

[Lawrence]

I do not trust my bedroom floor
At night, to keep its helpful form.
Its bowing boards, its croaking planks,
The nails that bind its rigid ranks
Must dissipate as night evolves
And shadows loiter shopping malls
And when the strands of streetlights sign
My sidewalk with moronic lines
Of milky haze; I watch the face
Of wood beneath my bed replace
Its boards with black, its nails with void
And any structure be destroyed.
The ceiling, zooming out of view
The windows shut themselves, and soon
I am alone.

This is a special loneliness-
Picture a shack in the wilderness
One small, unfurnished moon-lit den
Doors missing, ivy creeping in,
And you inside. Nearby, a book
Its cover titled, “DO NOT LOOK”;
Curious, you lift a corner
Nothing! You turn the cover over
And scan its pages, each one blank-
You reach the end; written in black
Is your name, and the following words-
“And that is what your life is worth”