dark end of the street

I Am The Night

I.

the sun has set,
whether on blue or grey cast day,
and so, the night steps softly, timid at first,
through the unfocused light of dusk,
then, with a blink, as the eyes struggle to adjust,
the shroud, the veil, the mask,
completely across the face of the sun.

II.

and with the drawing of the drape, comes the quiet,
the space where thoughts are free to drift as embers,
to flicker, to fade, to flit, to form, to fly in the face of,

there then gone, off then on, here then there,
fireflies outside a window, inside a mind

where voices may not follow,
their footsteps stumbling through darkness,
never finding their way to listen to, sit amidst
the sound of brush strokes, contemplated equations,
the whir of words spinning like mobiles across lobes
from left to right to left, science carnal with art
beneath sheets where Gertrude Stein and William James
pose like Picasso nudes.

III.

when night falls
the world is un enfant de nouveau,
asleep in the infinite silence of space,
the lunar shift of tides rocking her gently from side to side.

the yawn, the sigh,
anchor and moor
in a black sea of sinking dreams and shifting starlight.

IV.

stalking a house full of halogen light,
windows opaque at last and
only hinting at the trees just beyond their frames
filled now with the black paintings of Frank Stella,
this artist-in-residence settles into the rhythms
'round midnight, jazz riff words drumming off walls,
filling fake books with poetry in motion,
emotion cutting through smoke and fears
to comfort the little boy still lost inside
nightmares lying in wait beneath beds,
behind closet doors just barely left ajar.

V.

I am the night.

I swallow the fear, the loneliness, the depression
of the day, inconsolable, crouching in the depths
of a vampire soul blood-lusting for the dark end of the street,
to wander with wanton abandon, leaving behind the light,
rising with the moon as the sun surrenders
to my sanguinous cape spilling across the shoulders of this earth.

I am the night.

VI.

something about
out of the blue and into the black,
coming back again and again to breathe deeply

the coffee-narcotic filling this 10 x 10 room,
a seemingly suffocating proposition though air apparent,
for an heir apparent to another night of ink black bliss inhalation.

VII.

night is not murder, night is not death.

night alone watches over us,
as we sleep below its surface
navigating the depths of dreams
as disjointed and jarring
as the prose of Tender Buttons,

from which, to night, we awake, safe,

pulling the comfort of hours
still left before twilight
even closer beneath the chin.

VIII.

tired eyes

know

the Cimmerian destination

they travel to,

leaving behind Homer, Milton,

even this nocturnal meditation

of this good night.

painting: frank stella's 'marriage of reason'