Sometimes I write nights, in the séance of the city

to the thrum of the sidewalk, the fume of the smokestack;

I scribble the madcap of it all, I furrow my nails in vinyl and dance

            in memoriam,

            my face blackened by storms in the crematorium;

      there are those that watch the world through a window,

      and those that are watched;

and if they have no voice in their manic stumblings; and if instead they

                  mutter

to the shadows for traction, to the swirl in the gutter, the outer rim of

                  silence

they will find a friction

to descend upon cement with an electric lunacy;

      and though they will be outliers, they put out the candles

      and write nights too;

within the funneled starlight, and the wheel of the sky,

we string our bodies astral,

in procession and out, similar in divergence, until similarity diverges

      into steam and carbon

and time surges backwards to rejuvenate nights

and our visions are left clotted in their seams by

                  the dark.