All Night

1. an orange cat on a feather quilt
stretched across from the shadow
the cool hints the stars left behind

• another story without a point

until someone, anyone
looks up and sees how infinity works.

2. a man in blue jeans
looks black without a moon
he can not see the echoes of his footsteps
but the light from The Blue Corner Lounge
reminds him where he comes from
and how he's going no where at all
faster than any man rightly should.

3. a white car on Moody Street 
becomes only a wan memory
for a second, then a buzzing sound
under a long series of broken streetlights
then less than even that -
red lights playing in the eyes
of a stranger in a building beside a dead end road.

4. four drunk guys with good tans
tell the story of a portugese chick's ass
as she wanders through the housing projects
toward a corner store she doesn't know
is closed an hour ago. she doesn't know
her mother is worried. she doesn't know
her boyfriend is in the bar picking up
some underage red head named sue
as she walks past

5. on a thirty year old silver Schwinn 
a 40-something man with graying hair
and a 8-o'clock shadow pumps rusty pedals 
loudly and looks for cans with deposits
it only takes 60 for a beer. When he sees one
he falls over. It's hard to keep one's balance
in light of hope.

6. a fat girl eyeballs cars 
with only one man 
looking hungry
hoping he might want
anything 
but what he has. 
if he slows, she knows
how the night will end
no one else needs to know
if she's rockin' out or not.

7. One light on in an apartment building
full of elderly people. 
Sometimes, night comes early
for the dead.

He was a tall man
who liked to play mandolin
and paint nudes 
of the most prim looking women
he saw walking their dogs in the little park
outside the door.

8. a rat skitters under the stars
for less than a second
until a drunk man shuffles too near

neither believes
in what is seen
or what is unseen

neither knows
what is done
or left undone

Neither sins
tonight.

9. a fitted sheet ruffles
over the cobblestones
in the autumn breeze
a middle-aged teacher looks up
and sees her favorite constellation
that isn't there - she's just 
drunk. she looks up again
and admires the daisies
that are also not there
on the sheet

10. a young man on the phone
with his mother as she receives 
another treatment in Boston
for her pancreatic cancer
the words are indistinct 
but the tension is clear enough
from his wheedling tone, 
please keep trying.

11. a filthy homeless man might be
old (or young, who knows?) in a brown jacket
ripped and patched a dozen times
sleeps behind the self-serve gas station
under a fir 
with his left hand holing tight
to a stolen shopping cart he pushed
3 miles to get 
here?

12. A coyote rummages through 
a plastic garbage barrel
but all anyone sees is a dog
a hungry
mangy
dog
again
he leaves
back into the wood
to consider the ways a soul breaks:
in a snap, an instant, a thousand pieces, 
or sometimes quietly with an empty belly.

13. a millipede under a log
cool and damp
searches for rotting things
to eat
out of the way 
of the serious sun
Light or madness?

14. 
a duck floats at the edge
of the glassy blackness
of the old mill pond
resting, 
until later comes
with sharper teeth
and a moon
that doesn't care
who he reveals
to whom

15. the cormorant dives
beneath the fruitbat
and the mosquito
in a quest for the baby bass
who holds the line 
in the cold wet wormless space
below them all

16 a professor walks 
full of sweet hard cidar
from an irish pub
back to his cheap apartment
behind the lawyer's office
and the statue of a generic mill girl
who never lived enough
to die of cotton lung
or even old age.

17. After the first star
the blond girl on the corner
with the guitar lost track -
she was too busy counting 1's.
hours later, after the first beer
the same thing happened again
but this time 
to the time. 

18. She ate 3 potato skins
gooey with cheese and sour cream
crunchy with bacon
and fresh chives
Then she made the same old decision again
to toss it all up into the white porcelain bowl.
Even in the darkness - a girl can feel
fat.

19. a skunk waddles under a toyota
to the back yard
where the rubbish barrels overflow
with days of unfinished
dinner. He is only halfway through
when the neighbors dog disturbs him
enough to explain how badly interruptions stink.

20. she is crying in her father's truck
over a boy with a broken zipper
and condom. he says, "It'll be 
ok. it'll be
ok." like every other night.