UPDATE added poem " NIGHT OF A THOUSAND HOURS "

 

Night Of A Thousand Hours by Gordon Coombes

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 -