Daylight is Limited

Daylight is limited, and your

Waking hours book-end

Sun-rise or set; Light marches,

And Light climbs, Light starches

The soft from your clothes, the bend

They had in the cold still store.

Lose the sun to sleep, the Light to snore;

Find the brightest hours to spend

Hidden from the sky’s blue illumined arches.

Tense Tyler

Has never trusted his name, never

Felt its imprint etched

Too deeply upon the glowing surface of his soul.

It leaves him tepid, yet alert

To signals, the primary code

For his attention, a

Physiological stimulus, head

Snapping in response like a summer sneeze

Whipped at the light or the dust

In the heat scented breeze

That snuffs the Day’s lowering flame.

Auction off his silent pieces

Past the 10^th, his period of grace

And final moments as property owner,

Reborn in living room clutter

And coffee tables covered in cans

An itinerant bus-boy, undressing

Upper middle-class tables of foie gras

And triangular remnants of cheese.

An apron, a slender black tie,

A purple lack of sleep, a cheap white shirt

Graying itself against his form, making

Him smell like coffee, locally brewed, and he’s

Watering patrons that resemble flowers

In their pastels and how

Their old skin relishes the light and warmth,

And he’s noting this and nothing else.

Maybe he lacks a strong

Sense of self, lost

Watching the circular periphery

Spin ever away from his

Still center, though in truth,

He’s headed down like

A drill-bit’s rifled head,

Into earth or stone, water or wood,

It doesn’t really matter, so much

The material, the vehicle of descent,

Only the movement

Of gravity swallowing him.

Tenderness only follows

A bruise, or its imprint, its

Vascular shadow shed

By the light of impact and pain.

For sanity’s sake he shakes his brain

In its shell and sees,
Finally,

A sunset burning the horizon down.