I grew up in darkness and stars.
They might be old and familiar
but they were different:
black and bright; burning, cold; clear-cut.
It’s never dark in this city.
Nothing’s black and white;
it’s just murky.
The birds think it’s dawn
when it’s streetlights at midnight.
Artificial heat turns winter to autumn.
Everything’s half-done.
I mention this to you one night
before bed. You roll your eyes to the back of your head
and switch off the light.
“be my bride”,
he cried
but to no avail.
his request denied
with nowhere to hide
unable to debride
he traveled worldwide
his wounded pride
to salvage
he groaned he moaned
and agonized and why’d
in terms of emotion
he was oversupplied
his insides hog-tied
deep-fried
filleted and hung out to dry
anyway.
one day
during a longish car ride
he eyed the view
and thusly spied
a dewy cobweb
glimmering and wide
a tree bestride
broken.
he attempted to deride
but with a start, realized
hey
i lived
i loved
i tried
es tut mir nicht leid
(he’d had some free time
to study German)
at this point,
the writer rubbed his eyes,
sighed,
and went off to the loo
to commit well-deserved suicide.
I am thinking about the people who are sitting on that fast train that just went by in the distance, and the fact that some of those people are probably gazing out of their windows and looking at the same low sun as I am, and some of the same fields and trees and maybe even houses. And maybe some of those people are thinking about the people in those houses who are sitting in the last rays of sun of the day and looking out at the low sun and the fields and the trees, thinking their own thoughts about the people who love them or the people who don’t love them back or what they are going to have for dinner. And just maybe, some of those other people sitting outside their houses in the last rays of sunshine of the day, like me, are thinking about those people on that fast train that just went by in the distance.
