Literature
The Night Is My Friend
The Night Is My Friend
By p.b. wells
Here it comes again, the end-of-day rot,
news like a trash fire, our sorry government
and a couple dozen others flailing like drunks
at last call,
all of them shouting about freedom
while pawing the tip jar.
You wonder why the bars don’t run out of liquor,
why the pill bottles don’t have warning labels that say
“for when the headlines take a dump on your soul.”
you wonder why more people don’t check out early,
and then you remember:
most of us are too stubborn, too broke,
or too dumb to stop breathing.
The Bears blew it again.
Hollywood unveiled carefully sculpted shit.
and I’m down a shoe.
not a pair. one goddamn shoe.
how the hell do you lose one shoe?
it’s the kind of detail that makes a man
argue with his own hallway.
So, I clock out of the circus
and clock into the only thing that still works:
the Fortress of Solitude — four corners, three walls of glass,
night pressed against them like black felt.
I shut it all