When I sleep
a wind blows
over strange lands
I don't know
and I feel like a lamp
a stranger is holding up
looking for a way
through a dark field
I will walk through.

I know paradise
has never been lost
and so it can never be regained
like the moon, a one-eyed girl
in sandles running from the Marines
and the stars are her sisters
hiding in the dark bamboo,
only sixteen dressed in black
falling out of a tree at midnight
a rifle in her hands, a bullet in her heart.

Night fell around me
like a wounded animal
in a garden of statues
closing their eyes,
not dreaming,

they are blinded
by the moon
as it cruised by
like a ghost ship,
or a sack of ashes,

the only sound
the quiet humming
of sleeping souls

and a shovel
clearing ground
for digging
the deepest dark hole.

The young receptionist
suddenly crossed her legs
behind the window
of the waiting room of my love,
smacked her gum
and said promise not to leave,
always come back if you do,
even if we give you bad news
for the rest of your life.

I'm not quite sure
when the dark thought
first came to me;

it crept up softly
and quietly, like a black cat
in the garden of night;

like a light through a crack
in a door opening slowly
and too soon; or perhaps

a drowning man in the deep
waving back at the moon;
too far over his head.

The work I do is not easy,
but it's not bad.
I'm glad to have it,
when it's all I've ever had.

I am a student of the night.
I wear a black patch
on my sleeve.

My teacher's name is Sleep,
and she goes by Dreams, too.

She moonlights by the creek
that flows like a gust of wind
through leaves I never knew,
places I've never been.

We sing songs about you, love.
This song's about you.

You walk across the room
in your black *******,
a cigarette in your hand
and turn off the fan
in the open window,
like an undertaker waiting
by the door for the headlights
in the driveway debating
another swig from his flask,
like a ***** blowing smoke
in the dark flicking ash.