negativity flows through
our neighborhood – I’d just moved to
some place my darkness could finally embrace –
still, I keep quiet,
no need to fall over my tongue –
it’s August –
light conceals itself
in the flaws of the hookers,
and, before it’s done,
night will have devoured
a long day’s worth of heat –
night recalls when it’s not singing –
it has an appetite for stillness,
no closer to knowledge now than it’s ever been
just tides, dark steps –
people, no longer ourselves,
reduced to just more sheep to shear –
night paints her dusty rose lips in a restroom,
rubs my back,
drips down car windows like ram,
then rushes off in pursuit
of something both rustic and baroque –
oh it’s sad, says night’s pimp,
this trading in souls,
I should never have been
saddled with the responsibility.
The Neglected Ratio 