. The Poet's Beat .

. The Poet's Beat .

Monday, November 26, 2012

The Electric Bill

When the electric bill becomes a terrifying proposition...


Mosquito house guests hanging around in the still brisk air, Dining at their leisure, Taking advantage of my open-door air conditioning system, In with a slight soft breeze come my six-legged neighbors, Leaning in to whisper in my ear, To whine about their short lives, Their troubles from the puddle to the grave,
Cream-colored yard lights cast slatted shadows on the paintings on my walls, The long black fingers reaching creeping for me in my solitude, Charcoal eyes mistake me for their own in the flushed phosphorescence of turning cars, We catch one another’s lucid gaze, Like lost raccoons in the trash pile when dad pulls into the driveway, For a second we are brothers of the lonely regime, Until darkness collapses and we are misplaced again,
I wander my carpeted cave following the bouncing beam of a flashlight, A fisherman casting a yellow net upon the sea of my belongings, Single socks come and go, The corner of the couch is illuminated by the lantern’s signal like hazardous rocks off the coast, A ghost in the skin-cloth of my naked self passes through the mirror, Pink parts and pale spindly limbs wound tight under a body lawn of close-cropped pubes, Haunted by my own blinded eyes pupils retreating into themselves, I toss the flashlight and come up gasping for air,
The bills have begun to go unanswered, The phone rings with monsters on the other line, (It has already vibrated growled twice on my desk since I started this poem), Silent electronics surround me in my sadness, One does not appreciate those dim digits on the microwave until they are gone, I am a Pharaoh wandering a forsaken tomb of stone and drywall and asbestos in search of the Hall of Two Truths, My heart on the scales of justice judged against the weight of a single feather, To depart into the Kingdom of the Dead, I am an empty epicenter in a world alive, Headlamp sentences carved by cold fingers on the stoop beneath the stars, They twinkle with life when the bulbs above my stove do not, Always lit, Always burning, Always on, And there is no one whom requires a fee for their power.
11.2012

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