Anthems are being sung in closed off coffee shops;
low voices rumbling from the pits of darkness and I can make out figures,
no better than nude in the nothingness of nighttime.
Sonnets are written in the streets of Berlin and the handsome poet
weeps into his cup
because he is damned by his privilege.
Girls not women guiltily wash their sheets
by the moon’s light,
fuzzy, low iso settings captured by nocturnal breaths.
A mechanic’s hands wobble
because he misses his father and then
he’s gulp gulp gulping down rain
Babies sleep for brief moments and rise for mother’s breasts
in their clockwork language
that we have since forgotten.
Men—mean-drunk and fighting—
stumble by working girls
who watch with tired eyes then follow.
Muses’ poses falter towards morning,
their pouts fall and the artist no longer understands
sexuality.
A woman watches her husband sleep next to her,
snores muffled by the pillow
and she thinks about someone in Moscow.
Forget him, he is not for you.
Lovers spread their arms, their legs, to make angels
and swear by stabbing oak trees and silvia plath
that they will last the night.
Gas-lit lamps die
as postcard colors light the horizon
and writers can finally sleep.