It is 5am. Undressed but for boxers

                I join in the unvoiced burden
Of suburban detectives and cul-de-sac mystics,
And whomever else screams into a cloak
Their spells to cure insomnia.

I dream of the city-dwelling
fellow all-nite travelers,
envying their resilient hours’ darkly id,
their alley ways foot traffic car horns…
I can’t explain this impulse.

I know I know ‘The cure is sleep.’
But I think, ‘something more.’

   .  .  .

Hours expand.

My neighbor’s new rooster —-
He does not yield.

And the cockcrow puffs the blinds,
And the cockcrow wigs the veil!

Hours expand
Out of their wrinkle-&-bind;
But I’ve yet to penetrate the cloak,
Or tap into its magnetic-field.

        like
        so many,
just so happened
so clumsily
        to touch,
tugging at its tassels
but failing
        to clutch

Before the cockcrow puffs the blinds,
And the blackbird wigs the veil!

Only my eyes
under an apex moon
can hypothesize
in a bulb’s-flash (!)
such extravagant design…

After the boulders roll & crash
The avalanche of balderdash,
                      etc. etc. etc.

Out of the rubble
the wrinkle and bind:
A head atop some shoulders
with eyes like fingers —-
                undercover,
         cigarette-stained,

Following his leads, out along the frays
of a magician’s cape, or a death shroud?
Silver-stitched
            geodesics,
                        some twine-gold ciphers,
         some…

And the cockcrow puffs the blinds
And the cockcrow wigs the veil!

And as quickly as does the violet
in the clouds above the hothouses,
it dissipates… hidden like an axiom…
The hood is lifted —- once again revealing
       The Dawn Sun.

It is in these moments ensuing
That I feel most strongly
Something has been taken from me.

.  .  .


Postscript

Where are the rats of which I was one?
What are they chewing on, now that day breaks?
All those secrets left out in the dark?