I used to love this time of day
the sacred “Golden Hour”
—when the sun’s last dimming rays
casts down, kissing its earthly
lovers a long, slow, thoughtful
Goodnight.

I used to love this time of day
when simple sunshine
smiled at me and I back,
laughing in its
reluctantly cooling embrace
thinking of the joys of right
now—the carefree remembrances
of yesterday—and the excitement
of tomorrow.

Now—I hate this time of day.
its fleeting light taunting
Me with what I can
and what I can’t do
with the remnants of what’s left.

Now I hate this time of day
when the sun’s heartless rays abandon
me…again.
Another day past.
Another day gone.
Did today matter? The sun yells
as it drifts and turns, dancing towards the
inescapable, daunting darkness…
Did you make it?

angry men who do not know I do not have a dollar or a cig to spare. Ugly irrefutable contagion-handed howlers. Angry mischievous heathens that pantomime on 6:00a.m. sidewalk, Wicker Park gallow stop-sign, choreographed gutter-punk drunk walk. And of all he wants and could ever want splits down his gooey membrane brain in the outline of a noun shaped fragment of a clause, "Couldja spare 80¢ for the train," but of course I don't spare on the ellipsis or the period. Semi-colons I won't! My rubber-bottomed leather boots lash out, heavy scraping sounds trail this mirrored shadow half an angle behind me.

*****!! Blonde framed sunglasses from American Apparel, a gift from my sister in a folded Ray-Ban case is scattered on last nights bedroom floor, my girlfriend has certainly not noticed, the gloom-coated morning sun spray has not noticed; but I have unzipped a fissure in the ocular lens. My heart skips a beat. Her bedroom might as well have swallowed them whole. Now the house can halt and have the shade, swaying in Spring air in 10:22a.m. shadows. The aviator himself Howard Hughes would strike me with his 488 aircraft. Edwin Starr in his invincible sinister calypso of War would turn me round. I was sturdy as a rock until I began to forget my forgottens. These unknown unknowns I knew I needed. I'm over a quarter-century on to noon going nowhere- and quite blindly.

But then, still she could stand upright and find me. Her neck crooked, looking onward through the East, the gristly roots of rhubarb buried in her searching fingernails. She's threaded worse, and of course if I could just tell her- this is the kind of nursing which requires acute temperament and flexibility. I am thus on a journey to strike nonsense and fear from the idiotic vocabulary that put this nonsense in my head. Split through me like a butter knife into my apotropaic. Perhaps tar water could cure my ails. If not, certainly a sliver of vanilla would set me straight. Or if could just rain rain rain all day, then I'd make do without, but she is at school. My pistons are racked and nervous, and I'm not going anywhere but my rucksack stoop. I am camped in midwestern Spring soup. Fog, rain, and shade. The nightmare of day.

At night time my brain,
is in an endless loop.
From movies to cartoons,
Music videos and comedy.
Fragments of the unwanted
emotions of embarrassment.
Friends who have forgotten me,
And people I wish I knew.
And under these blankets,
I dream of another me,
One that can’t talk,
And one that speaks the brutal truth,
Who has all the power of the universe,
To bring her own self down.