it’s well past midnight
and i find myself
- alone
listening to the spurious
hum of distant
roads
and highways
i often wonder
where people run
- in the middle
of the night -
deep in the black when
the sane find comfort
in the cavernous folds
of afghan and quilt,
past the witching hour
buried in the lair
of predators and priests
i sit there smoking -
listening to songs
of the sainted
rise and drift
through my bones -
a breeze carries
the remains of
the dead,
- ghosts without rising -
through the mist.
tomorrow
begins with a
beggar's sun
and dies against
borrowed time.
