For the End of All Days Person

For Kat

A.

The woman of the deep-
textured clothing,
who wears nails painted
with the images of
verisimilitude,
and an ironically
taciturn facial
grimace, has yet
to show her whittled
mug under these pall and
apprehensive skies.

This sordid weather's
howl compliments
the bashed-in,
torn-up streets
that stretch slick
with dicey rainspew,
a liquid drawl to
encourage the
ugly foundations
waiting beneath.

The lanes splice
the problems of this
human vision,
retroactive with
uncertainty,
giving attention
to the sidewalk padding.

The streets are hollow
middles, vacuous spaces
to be filled and
to be anti-filled.
Even the orange sky
moves off to the
landscape's corner
on this night of pretense,
barbarism, and poverty.
It moves like a blade,
quick, accurate, downward.

Several cat's meows,
normalizations of
which I have learned to
expect when returning
home from work, remain
muffled tonight, and each
window through which
we hear the streetworld
just outside are right now
slammed shut and strange.

Even the soft and
plentiful keys played
into the piano and
accordion on the
computer are muted,
low-level noise hushed
to hold silence's safety
back just far enough.

"No utopia here,
boy. You are a
sinner, a done one."

B.

Last night my eyes
closed and I thought
before entering
the blind dreams
about the package I
must mail to my
friend in Bar Harbor,
and how brilliant
I would be when finished,
having created something
so complex and unusual in
nature. Today, with the
package completed, drying,
I start to write this
and stumble across a
a vision, a spectacle.

Up in one of the trees
that hug the splitting streets
like follicles of hair,
a flawless older
man sways from a
street light, catching
wind on his arm,
and the thick
moisture of rain
gives him weight
a la a reflexive
Louis Vuitton tie
and magazine-quality
button-up, azure blue.

The vision ends and
I wonder if the
woman of wet clothes
and jagged teeth,
wrinkled skin
and imperfection,
the woman of the local
storm, woman of cool
chaos, has wound up
on this street tonight,
and if she has left me
this startling gift
in which I must search
and concoct an artful
response as well.