Nuit Rouge

Lines drown out the night.

A fever of words transfixes my mind.  

Worlds away, I’m ticking awake. My body’s blowing in the breeze, but no such thing; all these dreams asphyxiate.  The room is too big, closing in nevertheless, lines expiring into deaf corners, defeated. Something’s out there. Or yet another, an indoor war of poison-punctured lungs expelling putrid fumes.

In spite of it all, I forgot to bleed.  The perforated calendar grimaces uselessly in the dark, face unchanging.  Where are you now, back-stabbing moon? I didn’t mean to cross you, but the other choices fled.  So go on, laugh at my long waiting.  Your bed is waning. There’s an echo between us.  My own words blister inside my skull, their bloodless corrosion eroding the bone. From the outside in, the telephone asks where is your family, static in its throat. 

Which one? These people don’t belong to me, I’m outside their house opening all the windows, blowing the cold air in, sweating out the moonlight. Just one pill blasts out the guts, germ of life deleted—no new moon.  And nothing bleeds, nothing seems.

Keep tearing along and a glass of water at midnight, split along the seam of this night, skin-stitches letting, waiting.