white nights

"My nights came to an end with a morning. The weather was dreadful. It was pouring, and the rain kept beating dismally against my windowpanes". -F. Dostoevsky

I watched a fat magpie reflect on azure wings, the slight curve of a sandy white twig, an overly unhappy cloudless sky turned to dark rustic gray, a staircase of wooden architecture, inky petals and cold coffin nails, dancing leaves and tender enemies, an array of violet ivy, a splash of newborn color, orange and purple bruises about the farms on the bleak horizon, the mirror and prismatic speech of an optical treepie, the slumbering contrast of light and dark ribbons, Dali's moribund Ballerina in an elegant and lavish swirl, in a rushing revolution of flat emotion, contorted bends, ribs and bands exposed, a fierce silhouette of silver gushes in the shadowy remnants of fallen snow, small actors dying with no vigor, nomadic tracks pressed meekly into the icy walk.

It's so very true, how we are, how we see the loneliness of the world and how one pristine moment of bliss can erase so much, dispatched mortuary's, executed daylight, so much that has mudded our outer shells and inside happiness, the sharp feathers and tranquil storms in heaven. I've walked those dreary streets, the blistering arctic wind has hit my damaged face and tattered poor overcoat. I've stared into the blurry circles of traffic lights, they've always reminded me of the inner circuits of maintenance robots, I've lived in this futuristic frost-globe for quite some time, a relic of sadness and loss, seduced by sirens and blaring ambulances, poetic floods of potent machines posing as vampiristic cannibals, charcoaled apparitions and silken ghost orchids on the trail.

I'm translating the frigid metal signposts, scanning the bar codes and numeric patterns and disturbing fractals, the dizzy subway labyrinth's and maze of half-eaten homeless people, ordinary and antique cedar skeleton's, mostly under-fed mannequins frozen in still-life, the battery terminals and computer lovers, I never expected a fem-bot to fall in love with me, my unnoticed and insignificant blot of southern oak balm, the punctured oxygen masks and dangerous vapors from the cemented-soil, the infested sewers and infected mechanical wharf rats, the insidious germs and speckled cholera of New York City.

 I wasn't entirely sure that I was capable of falling in love, my botched programming errors and shoddy mainframe technology, I assumed my obtuse life would mold and further turn to soda-fungus in the forest, I'm armed with a terse tongue, broad-manufactured shoulders, a vocabulary factory of sparking wires and spilled gasoline odor, oiled kneecaps and tired art-work camouflage, liquid narcotics and chalky residue bearings, opulent framework with abnormal emerald lenses.

I trod in silence, no trace, no sound of a footstep, a classical piano blackened by soot and heavy selfish anchors, I appreciate the somber armada of evaporating light concerning a city skyline that looks like emboldened metallic fingers in the dusk. I am fascinated by such things, bright armory's and ballistic missiles, vicious plants and feminine war-planes, I love caramel French-Pyrenees alp cherries and synthetic acorns, a damp sodden floor of gelid pine needles, the beautiful mulch of a canopied pond in the middle of a dense wilderness. I've found so many secret meadows, spied the gentle creatures, the playful scurry of spotted chipmunks, the battalions of army-squirrels and knavish fruit flies, the elephantine bullet-ants and coal-colored gunfire-bugs, we should love them, the arson-flies and banks of fatal hollis fern, wild berries and chocolate timber, they don't have harmful smiles, hurtful innuendo's and ravenous lust, the oblong lies and brutal cruel tyranny of fraudulent friends who sink their teeth into your head. I love insects, broken papery birch-branches and the boisterous bellow of king-frogs. I love the calm of cobwebs and the swaying ceiling painted with spider-bats, a living cloud of funny noses and battered mosquito's, the blood-bloated little bastards being devoured in the quiet twilight, a haze of burnt gold and bronze amber fusion.

I scribbled your name in the precious dove-clay, at the end of a velvet lash, on love notes inside a Queen B cigar box, within aged and expensive stone wrappers and on the first page of a favorite collection of short stories, the deceased author and grim imprint left on my soul, novels in my chest, tears on your cheek. I know you like banal modern literature but Dostoevsky is a gift you don't ask for, it's for the thinker, it's for someone like you, and how at times I can almost feel you smile, how I tell you that each day since meeting you has been a gift. You are a gift, our cozy furnished apartment and lavender apron, my hands around your waist, sweet kiss on your neck.

We relate to the walker, the houses and robotic morose despondency, I picture you often on your sidewalks, the cracks and atomic blobs of gum look like pink land-mines created by a childish Taliban, your tiny new balance feet in a scamper across the lemony baroque bridges and under the veils of smoky topaz, the angry kidney pumice growing like black and eyeless cancer cells inside of me, on the bus as it rains, your pretty voice and musical satchel, you have pretty eyes, the outside grimy goblet of picturesque umbrellas and brittle-bone-white structures, people in swarming yellow hives and in frenzied wild-african packs, the buildings and drowsy parks where they sleep, all wild and mad with a carnival's delight, subtle lepers trying to change their melting spots of rotten skin, the ferris wheels ablaze and shouts of masked-Halloween laughter, the popping balloons and clown paint, the October arcs and neon glow abuzz, the ugly red strobes and avenue of parading crowds, forlorn elbows and abandoned handicapped chairs, the bare toes of a starving hunger artist, the pensive onyx-iron bars and warm nestle of yellowed straw, the slick beams and mysterious tents, marked marble benches and gritty asphalt littered with debris, microscopic tins of rare crayons, strewn confetti and sugary candy wrappers in the dirt, millions of praying mantis at the fair, the belly sized ring of applauding bells and laconic sleet, the stricken faces and apple-bobbing roar of a forgotten wood-barrel of salt-brine, the chitter-chatter of insecure first dates, tarnished deer in the grass, the sleek cheetah and candied gazelle, a stalwart lion at the neck of an infant, predatory cazadors in a fixed-game, you can never shoot the limit and win the imitation prize, the pellet goes astray and hits a morbidly obese woman eating a funnel cake from her shirt, putrid boxes of popcorn, that overwhelming buttery stench, a nuclear fallout at the bay, at the covered and all dolled-up docks, malfunctioning radar, hues of ebony and candela banana peels, splotched bicycles and taverns of stuffed animals, stuffed pillows and weird goldfish, the brightly lit shoppes and toothless beggar in a drunk bucket of urine, the rank scent of faded puke and wealthy top hats, a banker and shoe-maker trying to arm-wrestle for a peanut-sized trophy, a quick fist-fight, an all-mouth italian with a fractured jaw and broken orbital bone, the Irish-drunk prize-fighter carried away in a foggy triumph, a soft faggot screams at the puddle of blood before he is bludgeoned by a tire iron, wallet stolen by the miniature bandito's, the dumbfounded mothers and intoxicated priests, the police patrols out-smarted by a dyslexic and cross-eyed thief with no arms or legs, the slow-witted and invalid adolescents, the sober hordes of corporate assassins, my hyper-vigilance, on a respirator, my apparatus breathing the artificial cotton-candy air, a click and slight hum, apparently an ersatz aphid, the blinking blue-green dot, outside the glass of this contaminated fishbowl, I watch them swim, I watch the leaves fall, the sap is a sweet nectar, bathing like birds in a bowl, it's like pine syrup, a bunch of bugs imprisoned in molasses.