Two Collins poems

Fever Dream

At night I crawl into a castle,
pull its outer walls up to my chin
and lay my arms over the battlements.

Outside there’s the roar of an army
of mice and elephants stampeding up and down the moat.
The orange, circular explosions created by their artillery
swell slowly and innumerably beneath my eyelids.

I bid sweet dreams to a winged,
sky blue dragon at my side.
We peer over the rampart’s edge,
look down the curtain wall
and see my feet sticking out
at the bottom, toes wiggling,
twenty feet below.

Viewing the back of my head

As I was free-falling into a nonrotating black hole,
several facts from my astronomy lectures came to mind
(and where were they during my exam?):
Have I passed the ergosphere?
How long until I cross the event horizon?
I could see the stars above me contracting,
forming a narrow circle in space.
I must be within the photon sphere, then…
This isn’t so bad, I think, because
now I can rest easy on that term paper.

Soon I will only see the back of my head
in all directions. How comforting to think
that back at home, my lover can look through a telescope
and see my body, stretched and disfigured,
millions of lightyears away.
A timeless keepsake.