What Do You Hear Now, Walt Whitman? (12)

12

Feel the breeze take over like submerging into water,
let the darkness drown the avenue and shadows usurp each oncoming corner,
everyone is suspicious and everyone is discreet.

Feel the cool, feel the winter, feel your tender toes,
tumble your way to the sidewalk,
the rain drops are tender, but the path is fleeting,
the sidewalk is turning and twisting, vision is deceiving,
shivering through every narrow corner,
slipping down the street.

The streetlights portray puppets,
pulling the night sky and pouting in the gutter.

It's devastating to devour, it's disastrous and disheartening,
it's creeping through the desert, it's falling and flailing in the gutter.

Tremble, tremble, traverse the landscape of the darkness,
the empty street, the long walk home; stumbling.
Hear the empty, dull air; let it consume you.
Forget the fervor and flame, forget everything,
forget the darkness and close your eyes,
forget the failure of the night and the day before,
forget the future,
forget the dark stumbling road that lies ahead,
forget the friends who got you here,
forget the feeling of your bed and your home,
forget what lies ahead,
close your eyes and ramble home, ramble wherever the road leads,
wreck and ravage the couch as it hugs you,
reach out for someone and find only a pillow,
fall, fall into some dazed, distant sleep unlike any tumble you've ever known.