DON'T THINK DON'T FEEL DON'T LIVE

GROWING COMES AT EVERY DUSK

Dusk rising on a world

earning a blanket of night.
Places where light
does not seed well in the passageways.
Moon made shadows are not meant to hide
but to abet the living done in them.
The alleys where time is spent outside
looking for a way in;
age is power they think.
It is not.

Deep shadows signal a start,
a beginning of habits
that monsters will die or detox from.
Winds sweep the aggregate rock into
faces finding that stones do hurt,

that dirt chokes.
Feel every insult served in darkness.
It is easier to escape control in

a fading place, a disappearing place where
mendicants are only allowed emerge or die.

Rolling dice and tossed cards

become sextant and chart.

The spectator place
where crowds gather

to have their indifferent amusement;

where cheering gathers its velocity
in the broken brick venturi.
Hilarity is looted in arenas of conspiracy,
cons, piracy, loot gathered from the weak
in the dun way to withering age.

Twilight full of feelings, hard and soft.

Neither passage nor escape

is negotiated with words in alleys.

Fists, knives, guns; pubic hair changes happen;

 them not able to give blood spilling it anyway

in every stab, every blow, every bullet.

Life is made behind the dust bins

where anxiety shreds clothes

and a virgin’s promise never meant to be kept.
is forgotten in a moment of moans and fast grinding.

Stolen

time

trying

to

feel

good

about

something,

anything

real.

© M Durfee

1/16/17