NIGHT

Darkened teeth with years and age all the same. What will we do us two tomorrow? Listen to new music, have some toast and tea? Or put some old music on the table a knife in your hand and one in mine. Go on, it's all gone! Sneak downstairs and bring up another bottle. Like blood it spilt on the musty quilt and outside the wind grew stronger. Roll yourself a smoke and pass the pouch. A deep dry sniff. Spark. Will you tell me what you see? All I can see are tea rings on the window sill, tea rings on the chest of drawers, tea rings on the floor boards. I can see you and you can see me. What will we do tonight? Will we go to the Blue Haven and awkwardly tip the lounge girl with her generous hair and her greedy eyes and her apron tied neatly at the back? Or shall we get stamped and evenslip and drip and wait for the sky to pulse brighter? If there's no deciding you go on your way and I'll go on mine and we'll meet up down around Lincoln Place. Sharp corner: beyond strings re-echoed. Day sky sun, golden streets, smell of Margo's olden sheets. Hammers. Listen. A boy playing one of those instruments what do you call them: dulcimers. I stay. Pocket the ones and twos and spread out your coppers. I'll keep an ear in and an eye out. Pulse. The night is a lend from the day is a lend from the night is a blend of the end in the end. That was the last lilt from the strings lifting over the rooves and curling around the corner past Asdills Row to Aston’s Quay. Come on! Time to pick up, zip up and liquidise the assets! A vision, a feeling, a reason arose. Pulse. It's overrun how it grows, the restless seeds of thoughtless souls springing from the dark and co-existing inside the same skull. It sneaks up on you like the spray on the seagull. Lighten up thunder it's only half eight! And wait, have I told you what a shame it is you didn't make the reunion? How quick a feeling opens and grows, arabesque like her all abloom deep in search of the Eastern Sun. We crossed the line from Busáras past the fixed stars to Le Monde. She had a coffee and I had a beer. Arise. She left with a sentence in her eyes. What were those eyes? I thought of you then. Of how hearing the dulcimer quickened the pulse in her. And the light? Pulse. Don't you see? It's within you smiling at it within me. Tell me softly can it be? Is Arachne free? No Shanti Om Nazi. She still weaves arazzi. God above pulse! A wet paint headache, I think thump I have pulse have you thump I have pulse good night thump good night pulse arise horizon arise.

Andrew Stephens999