The City Knows At Midnight

"The City Knows At Midnight"    -    2.4.2004

The sparrow on the windowsil
Sings a tune daunting and familiar
Green eyes on crimson horizons
White hands with black fingerprints
We should remember which way to turn
The streets move in time to our beating hearts
Incandescent and hollow

Arches and crevices
Trench warfare in between the holes
Of a million tired smiles
We lie in a world where we lie to ourselves
Wrapped in ebony tissue paper
Held up with the strings of falsity
Every word is illusive.

The rain falls in sixteenth-note triplets
A lament for a quarantined heart
Listen to their voices
Angels screaming from the lamp posts
Writing warnings on the street with broken lines
The numbers on my digital clock turn over
And a new day brings nothing
Only the buildings linging the streets
Swoon at the stars
So out of reach

They know that when we finally want
The endless black night, peaceful and still
Our curtains will have turned to steel
Bolted to our bodies, never moving
Leaving us locked inside our own betrayals.