The hum of blood is thick in my ears tonight.

The hum of blood is thick in my ears tonight. As slices of warm bread. When I walk through the house at night, after everyone has gone to bed, the silence builds thick about the head, plush dough, vibrating with the rising moon, intensifying across the hours. The heavy lack of words, deafening.
• Found a copy online of Maxine Kumin's "On the table"— a modern ghazal. Making its own rules and structures. I admire its loose existence. Without a rigid form. Yet. I still would like to create a short series of these verses based on a stronger connection to the original expectations— although the refrain alludes me at the moment. Running off downstairs, startled by my sudden movements across the room. All I wanted to do was turn off the side lamp. Glance at the night sliding across the windows. Wait for the idea to approach me. The cautious word, ever careful.

It does not help that these last few days I have been grading papers. The ever present composition resting along the curves of my desktop. Thomas Jefferson. Keystone pipeline. Racial intolerance. Same-sex marriage. Charlie Bird Parker. A sundry of diverse topics to select. Shifting my focus.

Like Eliot's stray cat, brushing across city streets and fallen fences between back alleys— Wandering across machineries humming to themselves. That ever present hum in the ears.