DARK NOVEMBER MORNING
An unexpected beginning lorded over by Uranus,
and by Neptune's salt of the sea, my life, our sameness,
a day of puddles and reflection, another night of gleaming streets.
Because I glittered in the light I thought that I was important,
but tender fog rolled in, my trail dissolved,
it grew dark and the old game ended.
She rolled over, too. So beautiful, a waking lover's smile.
We sighed unanimous, okay to snooze for another REM cycle.
I headed over to Military Highway, a dreadful strip of sleazy juke joints
and char-broil grease pits, where I pushed my way in
past vacant, hollow babes, divorcées, who stared ahead blankly,
each of them rehearsing calls from the zone.
One Virgo was taking notes.
Under the TV's white eye, showing reality's new white age
a voice droning high in a corner, announced, "main gear touchdown",
we're all back once more, safe from space-age disaster.
The radio alarm clock is programmed to send us off to work,
and yesterday's playbacks are even more annoying
than when they first happened.
Waking to a weekend, you can fix things in your sleep.
The rattletrap school bus like a Mir station, travels thru memory.
As always, the driver is drunk and
we have to walk the rest of the way home.The gadgets that make an easy life possible
still cling to orbit somewhere up in military heaven.
Back home, dark as November, the mirrors are covered
and the air is heavy with kerosene.
The stove is impossible to light, so you sleep thru the cold.
Like a holiday spent on impassable roads,
realizing the smell of a lunch bag, a heated room or raincoat fumes,
you wake in the groaning of night, remembering what’s left of a dream,
the flashing beacon of the universe splashing in your unbelieving eyes,
and all you have ever known is being pelted with blue meteors.
"You saw it, too," she said. "We've got to stop this,
dreaming the same colors."
But, the next night , blue meteors were seen over Chicago.
©Jimmy Warner Design, 2010
