All Night, Give or Take a Sloppy Hour
My neighbor’s patio light burns like an ember, burns cleanly, never mind circadian rhythms and light pollution, burns like the all-seeing eye on every soiled dollar bill in his wallet, burns to keep his house and lavender Coupe de Ville once driven by Liberace safe from burglars and hoods and communists who sometimes parachute into your own backyard dammit, burns like the wedding album of his dear departed Betty, so slim and lacy and untouched back then, burns too like guilt because he couldn’t save her misfiring heart in the produce aisle six years ago, burns at 100 watts purchased in bulk at Ace Hardware, burns like the teeth of my cat hunting hummingbirds in his tangled Eden, burns for the cul-de-sac’s greater good, like a flaming umbrella warding off the apocalypse and glue sniffing teenagers, come hell or high water or marauding cougars spotted in the foothills of late, burns too like the paranoia that keeps him from attending Sunday meetings because his Mormon bishop wants to marry him off to a church hag widow, burns too like the fireflies of his childhood in the Ohio, which he and his friends would catch and smear on their faces till they glowed like nuclear goblins, ah, the Wordsworthian oneness with nature back then, burns too like the fire in my veins for my beloved who has gone to bed already and refuses to sleep out on account of the sentinel brightness next door, burns without respite, thus preventing our house from nightmaring properly, let shadows, let more dark matter bombard me in our upstairs hall, burns like too much knowledge and not enough faith, more murk, less particle and wave, more chances to close my eyes to my neighbor’s hallelujah blaze and taste night, that sweetest of leaven, flooding me from within.
