Dark is the Night, Hot the City

Dark is the night, hot the city.
Armpits sweating beads of population,
Running down in rivulets, unlit,
Glinting in the passing rays of nighttime car lights.
Tall buildings, tall hairs. Sprouting from the streetskin.

Passing through the breath of the lungs,
Hot and moist, deep breaths, hot panting ones
Marked skin with the scratches of unseen nails
Bites, refuse, hot city tableau, families of them.

The dancing discordance of jazz that isn't heard
And all around me the odd, the absurd movement
Of life, unlived like life. Lived like desperate moves,
Fun found in the blood underneath the city.

Dark is the night, and pressing down like a muffle
On the city's exuberance, its trouble;
The citizens are a part of the darkness, they know it -
Old friends, yellow streetlights, cigarette butts burning.

Dark is the night, hot the city.

Deep Anxiety

Being pulled under again
By a dark sea monster,
Unhinged from the helm
Of any ship.

It's mine, I suppose, like a sickness
Or a soul, and I'm a buoy with some breath
I need to breathe.

It's diving again, down deep,
Down under,
And into the dark, I see we go
Through the veil of my eyelids.

Roped to the madness of an angry beast
Running from,
Running from me,
And I, helpless, jerked along
What mad world united us?

Me, and a hurt,
Me, and a heart,
A blue whale schism
In me.

Back and forth,
Past and present,
Who am I, anymore,
In the dark I'm someone else,
And here, on the surface, I forget them.

Calm the beast,
Calm! Calm!
Take aim at a distant horizon,
Make peace with the depths below.

Calm the heart,
Calm! Calm!
Take aim at another life,
And go.