After 'OFF'

There is no silent night.
I press and click and shift all levers,
buttons, prompters, dials to “OFF” –
and then: the grand eternally internally

returning roar! – sufficiency soon
drinks itself into an ever-rising More:
timbres of inanimate apartment house –
refrigerator motor and a subtle nervous

trill: cooing, billing in the groin –
and on the window sill – quite like
the faint rejoinders I can just make out
from the monogamously married

pigeons on the fire escape:
there is this moment every night, before
I fall asleep: I doff my cape and face
the whisper of delivering my

consciousness to fate: doesn’t take
long for the cake to bake and frost
and cut and serve itself and fill the void
with fat and crumb: no ear is deaf;

no mouth is dumb; no stomach
isn’t ravenous. Every moment is a portal
to a cavernously echoing mad
smorgasbord: hungry, gaping, crying

to be fed: rash assonance and circus
in my head: rhyme-zone of a dream-land: –
time honed to a scheme grand
enough to wield distraction – feed

the tummy with the waddles and
the wobbles of its modicum of sense:
exact for me a dense big bang –
pack it into something I can hang.



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