Practice

Practice


It can be exhilarating.  The strength, the freedom from man’s rules,
the night can be glorious, a field of play.
I can, like any child, enjoy fantasy adventure.
Second senses weave bright glints and glitter through
soot and streetlights, waste and litter, make a collage of
hidden felonies, fake gaiety, the smell of fear drugged by
violence, random sex, puke and cologne.
People saunter more after dark.  Relaxed by
anonymity, they fall into more primal roles.
Artificial light only adds garish color to the scene.
No actor is fooled into day’s dialog.
Hipsters, tricksters, dying stars so young,
take charge as if they create the world, as if
it were theirs alone.
I can pretend, be anything, anyone.
I am imperious, a creature apart.
Without shame, I feast on human vermin, a crusader.
But then, that tainted food repulses, even as it enlivens
with red warmth.
I lose interest in the game.  It goes on too long
for sustained adoration.
Nothing pleases.  Renewed energy jangles.
I have no drug to bring relief or oblivion.
I have no dear friend to call past midnight, happy to
be wakened to my voice, to be a source of love and
tethering against an abysmal brink.
What I have is the demon that I am eternally on call,
mocking.
Why should any of them care or understand or notice?
I am not meant to exist.
At best I am a joke, laughter so close to whistling at
archetypal phantom graveyards outlined in ether.
What living mind could befriend such as me?
What could I give such a friend but shame, or
perhaps callous revenge, a pet killer to vanquish
enemies, obviate fear.
I have no room to judge.
Morality has no place for me.
That beribboned box is so far away, a decorative
blip on barren landscape.
I am all I have of certain companionship, to befriend
this endless child that no one else has motive to accept
or comfort.
I am practiced at this.