At These Strange Hours

I'm beginning to understand catharsis. I'm beginning to laugh cruelly at this city from Beginning to End, from the ghost of the Lipton Tea Factory to the Eerie Lackawanna Station rushing with youthful aspirations and old dreamers' crushes, or perhaps some are like me, entombed when yet another wedding divorces happiness from their dulling eyes hopping from bars back to monkey bars. During these strangest hours, only the world of my mind exists as I give life briefly to the poets that penned before me, that speak through these English symbols and teach my imagination. Outside, there is no sound. It's almost 4 AM (again). The abyss reigns over every apartment, until it rebounds at dawn, and I remember those flocks of pigeons dead now and especially that special white pigeon with deep ruby eyes that I used to love and feed our bread. I named it Moonface like the owl from the show that ended long ago. Outside, there is no sound. The hiss of the heater, on and off... my wide-eyed calico wishing to heal my perma-charred heart with her aging purr... the light of a chandelier older than I-- and I, trapped within this lie. The world outside is dead, not because I remain awake, pondering, seeing each Her smile, and leave... but because this time, the Hudson flow swallows all, and I finally see that I am small.