A final ebb and the sun trickles
over the horizon with Copernican
contempt. Light’s leash tightens
on its wayward pups, who cast
maniacal shadows behind their mother’s back;
the prodigal beasts
trail after her,
culled by necessity. A mongrel pitch
crawls from the east,
hounding street
to car
to sidewalk;
it lays its claim. The moon,
in its turn,
enlists shattered glass and
silver bike frames to fortify its glimmer.
It is to no avail. Pitch gains. The street lights
heed their cue. The monolith Cereus
vibrates havoc and unfurls
the dogs of bloom. Sepia tones sink
through the ether and
settle, molasses on the curb.
In anesthetic din I
hear the echo of a yelp
quelled in the half-step
between glimmer and illumination.
The iamb completed,
I set myself in burlap browns
and half-hearted grays of a front porch.
I flick flick flick ignite. It drags slow and
the fire stretches towards my lips,
taking well proportioned
crackle steps in quarter time.
Cars waft by,
headless specters that shear
the muted din with their
halogen staffs. They bathe me
in white incoherence. I reign
in the smoldering
of my cigarette.
These lights. These damn lights.
These humming muzzles
of progress. They hold the hounds. But my
monolith flickers,
at once the devils come. They
gnash and vomit acid and then they are gone,
before I even feel their swelter.
I know they
pace ‘round these holy spheres at night. They stay
alert, to harrow me from their hell.
I rustle my poise, shirk the dust. Flick my
smoke into the street; it shatters. Retreat. I dare
not look too hard. Think too long. Because
it studies me too. It knows where to tear
the nails from. I foxhole deep into hallow.
I close my eyes and mouth pacts,
thick silent woolly whispers that levee fortresses.
“May the sun retain us, though we’ve lost her sight.
May heaven be our roof, and the dirt floor our rock. And
may the dark clanging paths reck the rod of pied beauty.”
