The Secret Hours

The medicine chest is making all the birds drugged and jittery.
There is a blue fog in my head and I am being hunted
by a new form of animal. The icebox is tangled in family life.
A porcelain matchbox? Oh my little machines, enjoy the crisp solitude
of this matching day. Of course all the better parts
are glistening like a tungsten puppy. It's curtains
on your factual pajamas. It just ain't working out.
The slow capture of my solitude, spinning on angels and franks.
You will always and only have the residue of motion washing
your hands with mercury, making the sign of the cross so as
to provide a veneer of comfort to those seeing you cross your
fingers. A truck bangs into something at 20 miles per hour
and the chances of survival of the thing that truck banged into are 20%.
Sound and time are just out of control tonight.
Lock the door, spit on the candle, and do your
math. But that smell: the way electricity smells on the subway.
You and your floral charm, peg-legged and harnessed to the small
of your back, the secret stain. Sitting on my ass. Dawn comes,
newspapers come, scag metal plays, all together now.