Wanderer

Wanderer


These short summer nights, stench of rotting garbage,
insects intrude, homeless humans too hot to sleep
mumble, wander.
I don’t feel heat, nor do insects accept me as attractive.
Mad night wanderers pay me no mind, no belief.
The summer city in darkness exudes a fantasy quality,
an off-kilter surrealism. Moon bright yellow magnificent
globe seems to reign over a starless sky, casts a watchful
glow over skyscrapers reaching from below.
I am in a movie mood, imagining plots, dramatic dialog,
brilliant Moon to moonstruck worshippers demanding
payment for their sustaining dementia.
Dense, rank odors encourage distraction.
I am enticed to visit Autumn’s, Kathy’s window.  So late
the sun sets, tonight I disappeared seconds before she,
Autumn’s mother returning home, could notice me at
her daughter’s side assuring safe passage through ugly
urban blight.  Some late nightfall we probably will meet.
How do I explain myself?  A neighbor child allowed to wander
alone at night?  Perhaps her self-involvement, active defeat,
would protect my identity from curiosity or rational critique.
I don’t want to know this woman.  I don’t want to judge her,
or befriend her or fool her.  I want my illusion of innocent
friendship, uncomplicated love.  I want a clear demarcation
of night that doesn’t impinge on my days’ happy dream.
If I were smart I would long ago have learned to traverse
hemispheres to avoid these seasonal inconveniences.
So strange to look forward to days.
I am struck with sudden troubling.  Have I been taking my
basement paradise for granted?  For how long will no one claim
that real estate?  I have usually kept prepared for emergency
relocation.  Forethought, a reminder to be mindful.  Seasons
change.  Mortal children grow.  Eternity is never about secure
stagnation.
I in my dark traveling, another mad, paranoid, delusional creature
of the street.  Ideations are not always wrong.  Best to be flexible,
devoid of expectations.  Wasn’t that always the primary rule?
Zombieland, braindead fools unable to sensibly rest.  The stage is
set complete with buzzing bloodsuckers, insects and small vampire.
Hot, dank nights can be surreal, free of natural limits.  Night so
compressed it must make its statement succinctly, in terse symbols.
I am unclear on this concept of reality as authorized by men of
science.  Reality is fluid, fickle, not a fan of laws.  Moralists who
do such things can say, write, pontificate.  In my years of experience,
fools pontificate.  Real men adapt, or die, well, really, both.
None of it really matters to me.  Just mental distraction.  Just letting
my mind fall into stories to kill the time between kills.
This night is short, and filled with wanderers.