inaugural

electric hum of the vigilant appliances
praying like monks incessantly like cicadas
and yet no living thing stirs at this hour but
my own restless fingers somehow scraping words
from the empty gulch of the dry present moment.

not my apartment; a friend’s who works graveyards
and so here is the silence of a stranger
in another man’s life

trying it on for size if only to better appreciate his own
or maybe catch a wild glimpse of it
sneaking up from behind.

just outside, the sound of footsteps on the stairway
just outside, the eternal song of temporal crickets
just outside, is the day tomorrow will turn out to be
it coyly smirks – making no promises.

the life I find myself wandering through
has it’s share of blessings and curses
imagined deaths and surprising births
stifled laughter and icy unresponsiveness

the life I find myself drifting through
with no shore in sight in any direction
has it’s predictable unwrinkled hymnody
and also a somewhat spontaneous liturgy

in contemplating this entangled existence
I unclench just enough to remember it’s shape
in continual flux, I approach like a game hunter
thesaurus in hand, I only jumble it more.

yet one pure moment is all I ask
this weekend, may I forget myself long enough
to remember the spark that started it all
and see your sweet face at the bottom of my
everything.