Night of a Thousand Hours
No. 1
Part I
A thousand Blue-jays & Ravens
& night birds squacking
outside my window
spreading poison on the windowsill
to stop their noise-making
which rips through my brain-fevered head
like a thousand chainsaws-
a thousand chainsaws
a thousand lawnmowers
a thousand electric hedge-clippers-
a thousand dogs howling at the moon
a thousand cats desperately meowing
a thousand cars roaring
up & down the street
with windows down
blasting the air
with a thousand ear-cracking
pounding songs
on radios & stereos -
a thousand trucks
with their eighteen thundering wheels
go rumbling by all day & all night
to be suckled by the thousand foot high grain-elevators-
as a thousand ships slide in beside the pier
loading up tons of wheat unloading tons of sugar
ships going to & fro to Cuba & Russia
to Mexico or Chile or Spain -
a thousand lawnmowers
cutting the grass
a never ending battle
against unruly unwieldly grass
too rebellious for its own good-
a thousand empty beer bottles
thrown from a thousand apartments
at a thousand parties
across the street
or six floors above or below me
the glass explodes hitting the sidewalk
or the street or roof of the bowling alley next door-
a thousand teenagers
in loose over-sized big baggy pants & baseball caps
skateboarding at 3am -
3am it's always fucking 3am
a thousand couples at 3am
making out on squeaky beds
all around me -
a thousand couples
screaming at one another
threatening to beat the other
threatening to leave the other
threatening to stay forever -
NIGHT OF A THOUSAND HOURS
NO I
Part II
a thousand drunks
puking beside the tree
in front of my house
men dressed in tuxedos or thousand dollar suits
women in a designer's exclusive gowns
stumbling & laughing loudly
leaving the posh Halifax exclusive club next door -
a thousand taxis blowing their horns
impatiently waiting for a thousand partiers
desperate to go down-town for another drink
to pick up some guy or girl
to have a story to share with friends the next day-
a thousand television announcers
bellowing out the news of the day
of a thousand brutal murders
of thousands killed in a war somewhere
of thousands starving to death
with film footage in living color & stereo sound
on a thousand television sets
filling a thousand apartments & houses
with a strange blue glow-
a thousand giant leopard slugs
sliming their way along sidewalks
gathering together at night
conspiring in secret meetings
performing strange relegious ceremonies-
a thousand buzzing bees
each trapped inside a glass jar
a thousand small brown bats
flying around the street lights
in a feeding frenzy-
a thousand telephones
all ringing at once
but there's no one home
just a thousand disembodied voices
on a thousand answering machines -
a thousand faces staring at me
through my windows
a thousand faces reflected
in a thousand mirrors
a thousand images
flood into my eyes
a thousand memories
fill my burning over-stuffed brain -
a thousand neurons
firing as I fall on the floor
into a blissful coma
as a thousand suns
explode over the horizon
ending this thousand hour night -
Night of a Thousand Hours III
Anyway here is the newest addition to my poem NIGHT OF A THOUSAND HOURS .
NIGHT OF A THOUSAND HOURS III
TWENTY THOUSAND NIGHTS
PART I
twenty thousand nights of a thousand hours
imprisoned for life
pacing the floors
tossing & turning in beds
haunted by regrets & nightmares
like turning on a spit over a raging fire -
turning my back on a thousand well-meaning friends
never saying good-bye properly
never keeping in touch
never dropping a line or a post-card
from this island fortress
nuking all my bridges -
writing thousands of lines of poetry
waiting for the muse to strike
to infuse these lines with greatness
they all seem so mediocre
so banal so lifeless
letting me down no longer
feeling the ecstasy of creativity -
where are my Leaves of Grass
my book of evil flowers
my Alcools or Waste Land or Cantos
or ode to Brooklyn Bridge or angry Howl
where are my songs of innocence & experience
my Heaven & Hell or Divine comedy
where is my Paradise Lost or Faerie Queen
where are my Lucy poems or Childe Harold
where is my Patterson or Sonnets to Orpheus
where is my own epic or manifesto
defining my aesthetics & metaphysics
my sensibilities & my politics
where is my requiem & lamentations
where are my revelations of the indefinable
like precious gem stones buried
at the center of myself revealing
the secret face of my soul where it gathers
around it like a magnet all other souls
each as luxurious or as poor as the other -
am I a madman who became a poet & philosopher
or simply a poet who became a madman
is it all an act or passing phase as some say
hard to believe at fifty it’s a long fucking phase
if a few lines could mean something to a select few
would that be enough
fifty a hundred a thousand
who are we kidding maybe millions would suffice -
what if I had taken that other road
neither seemed from a distance better than the other
their secrets locked away an uncertain future
I stumbled down some road or other
found myself somewhere else -
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