a headline, a title, an instant self-commissioned
to live on, sponsored by these dying times,
a new poem, a different rabbit hole, a reflective surface
of in-between spaces, that separates letters, I am
that man, charter member, a voting citizen of the

The City That Never Sometimes Sleeps

the new traffic patters, i.e. no traffic at all,
messes up circadian rhythms, no trucks honking,
even the ambulances silenced, asking what’s the rush,
this year the cicadas, them too, took the seventh year off,
the strange silence wierded them out,
so they sheltered in place

our device, informs, it has been employed
20 hours 42 minutes of the last twenty four cycle,
don’t disagree, wonder only where the heck I was for
the 3 hours 18 minutes unaccounted

wasn’t sleeping, of that ‘rest’ assured,
must have been unconsciously
writing poetry, a voyage to my
beloved holy dark, where nightly
he reimagines when things were
normal and empty streets were
a refreshing sight, a welcome change,
not a harbinger of the visible separation
between the living and the dead