Night Watch

Miles past the nightstand over the plastic water bottle. the Ambien pill dispenser and the soul-bruised eye shades, an arrhythmic clock ticks like a bombed-out tank. Of course there is the lampshade (that lighthouse for the luminescent krill of submerged consciousness) that seems attached to my skin whenever body parts want to cut ties with a mattresses concave reality. Secreted like a drugged shark in the shallow recesses of a snaring drawer a snubby barrel with six mad prayers snugs up against a snoring bible. The raven iridescence of night-cats prowl a life leaking bed; occasionally they look up their eyes shining as they search for an alien presence. On its four arthritic legs the nightstand watches; its tour of duty still patrolling a far off conflict of doubt and faith. Time to turn over the hull of being, upright any surface with a legibly printed label, then haul that address back in from the far side of an arm’s reach. Time to shuck whatever shell still rolls unopened in the surf of the tossed and blanketed.