This is the lamplight: men in shredded jeans.
Men with holes in them, and the cool air.

Disciples of midnight blue
take to the streets, and give motion
to the stillness, rolling shopping carts and hot
ravings and slamming car doors,
full of bluster.

Women click and ride bikes, swooping
down empty roads like starlings. They clutch
at bags too big for them, and
make off with hearts, minds, and kiss the wind
with their dragon breath. Lips on the moon.

The lamplight,
it gives fits. Has souls shaking and
plunging into emotional tantrums, full of
the most life; chests bulge from feelings that
compel them to walk. So they walk. And
run. And scream. Like mad geniuses they
bend and break from visions,
clutching truth, then reeling in pain.

The torches glow, zinging the moths
into flutter. Matter fades into the background.
Quiet sounds boom as monsters.

People die, but not in ways
that cause death.

There is crying, and bleeding. And somewhere,
lovers grab each other, pressed as close as two
pieces of paper. Everything touching.

Everything
in the darkness.

First appeared on Poet’s Corner April 29, 2016