Night Belongs
written by: George Gad Economou
the night belongs to poetry, when
intoxication rises and unfolded plot points of novels
hide in crepuscular corners and grammar takes a backseat;
the night belongs to short and long lines of cut-up words, blithering
rhythm that results in brave dispositions of a heart wounded a hundred times
and a liver twitching for the next sip of crude booze.
as the sun goes down, and the fifth of hooch reaches its end,
the mind twirls and spins and roams untraveled lands, visits
extricated civilizations their lives entwine with yours and
mine and with the neighbor’s watering
her yard in a bikini.
the night belongs to poetry because it’s when most
sleep or fuck and no one moves around, prick your
ears get a good earful of their snoring and moaning and grunting,
the nightmares waking up the man owing money to everyone in the city,
the plangent unorgasmic screams of the wife next door,
the grunts of a young boy first discovering how to work the shaft,
the wailing and bawling of the newlyweds down the block.
breathe them all in, the night belongs to poetry,
because poetry’s life—brutal, cruel, sporting
three mugs each uglier than the other, drooling over us all
with agape jaws and sharpened tusks.
poetry’s life and death; every line might be the last,
every dot the anticlimactic finale.
another revolution around the sun might come to an end soon,
one of the billions left; we won’t be around for the
refulgent last one but every
poem, just like every night, brings it a little closer.
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