I have taken a razor
to the blue grey edge
of another listless twilight,
the yellow streaks of sky,
the blistered black of my mind
Down the dim-lit hallway
another new neighbor.
Tonight he stands silently
in the well-furnished center
of his immaculate living room
holding a stained plastic flyswatter,
green eyes beneath scratched goggles
roaming over the vast desert
encasing his exhausted mind.
Next door the ghost-faced woman
talks back to the voices
trudging around in her head,
wondering about the rain outside,
the man living in the walls.
My best friend has shipped
his only son to the West Coast
to be raised by wolves.
Down the stairs on the third floor
Gerry stands nude in his bedroom
marveling at the tautness of
his beautiful hairy body.
Naomi sits comfortably on his
tan recliner sketching him,
amused at his other insecurities.
My ex-girlfriend Ashley’s voice
asks if I’m okay from the
secure distance of a new cell phone.
What can I answer? I have
lived here all my life and will live
here a thousand more years,
the beat of Dizzy and Bird
accelerating through the wispy
hearts of the charlatans
and the smugglers always dancing
behind their cold locked metal doors,
music a substance I subside on
as I stumble across the parking lot
under the intravenous rain.
Outside the front door
as I struggle with my key
the pizza delivery man we all know
stares at his stalled wet watch,
worrying at his loneliness.
Here it is as if time stands still
in the deep blue shimmer
of electric TV light.
Here everyone sleeps lightly.
Here everyone knows someone about to die.
When the lights inevitably go out again,
Tony stares at the bathroom mirror
and thinks of you, candles
quivering in the apartment across
the swampy courtyard bright and busy,
his lined craggy face a movie
where the credits have begun to roll.
The rain continues unabated,
threatening to never end,
the raindrops like dying locusts
falling against the windows of
the old apartment buildings.
The rivers swell against their banks,
hoping to engulf us all in
a generous baptism we secretly desire.
On the first floor speechless women
with languid eyes and cobwebbed white hair
sit on hard wooden chairs
in dining rooms they’ve never used,
remembering answers to questions
they only ask themselves.
In the morning black rain
falls from a blacker sky,
a black hum surrounding us all
from the tops of telephone poles,
the television always on
showing black and white cartoons,
the manager of this place
wandering the lean hallways alone,
her voice the white noise
of the rest of our lives.