JOHNMICHAEL SIMON POETRY

descending from the train of night

thinking my way through the crowd

black dreams with suitcases

coats brimmed up

faces erased in blankness

heading for the exits

dispersing like mist lifting

over daytime street scenes

throb my mind

 

deep in this evaporating place

where images swirl their garbage

and photographs of faceless corpses

etch their likeness on my plates

newspaper headlines surface

like soggy rags

 

a mother crying love

starving her parchment-bodied

three year old; museums with

black and white renditions

of bone-heaped pits; madmen murdering

the foster parents of their own

demented childhood

 

bared to its obscenity, the city

shows its daytime scarred face

and far from sleep now

I, clad in hood and cloak

write graffiti poems with its blood

 

return tickets to anonymity

of the night