Life Extension

If the nighttime dream
Were renamed life —
Prolonging sleep
Would be extending
Preserving
Life

If a dilapidated building
Were renamed life
Its scaffolding — its mummification —
Would be preserving
Life

If none of these
Is life —
What aspect — quality —
Is life —
Preserved — extended —
In a comatose
Other —
On artificial life support —

If neither the scaffold — outside
Nor the dream — inside
What but
Possibility — imagination —
Of time —
Outside sleep
Outside the building
Is preserved — extended
Saved

The imagination
Projected — onto the scaffold
Into the unknowable
Unseen, unverifiable
Dreamer within

Whose resurrection
In a dilapidated — dying —
Building
Is named
Life extension —

Life
That each — every day
Of waking
Projects — imagines —
Extends
Onto the scaffold
Of other — into the unknowable
Unseen, unverifiable
Dreamer within

In the dream
Of time —
Outside