The Night Wears a Metallic Edge

The night wears a metallic edge.  We are

hunkered down into our dim lamps

against a giant wilderness of yawning

interstates.  My feet feel warm when

I finally sit down.  Been wandering

the house all day, laundry, tending

to five children scampering running

across the living room floor, pell mell,

hurly burly, lung gust of young screams

against the coming twilight until

silenced into beds, into sleep.

And all these half a million day

start worries over particles, dust

mites, rust bargains on 34th street,

the President’s pockets full of money

whilst his medicine bag is full

of lies.  Countless movements to

accomplish the simplest things (even in

this day and age of befuddled technology)

the slick slime idea of ‘insurance’

as if any group of folks could save

me from myself not to mention all

Russians and Chinese and anyone

else convenient enough to be called

enemy, the feared apocalyptic

horse and fire smoke swirl villain

existing only in the carpetbagger

slum fiction of Washington politicians

spreading wealth like plague next to the

swirl suck Missouri river.  Half

a million day start worries over

an early morning hard on before

the great seething humming void up in

the dark blue bathroom that my wife painted.

There is no salvation in a song itself

unless blended in to ears open enough

to hear it.  Such ears are able to

perceive strings of pearls in

stars, clearest skin of her back

and each mole and birth mark,

every strand of hair in my thoughts

and run through my fingers by

the day’s huff-puff end.  

- - - - - - - -

(May 18th - June 3rd, 2014)