Under the dragon's wings

Sitting in the dark 
being who I am by acclamation. 
The solitude half memory, half exorcism. 
No one else ran for the position 
so I've settled on trying to live up empathetically 
to this person that's tried for so long to be me. 
The sound of the occasional car on Highway
in the deep of the desert six miles away 
puts its hand over its mouth.
Everything's a secret at this time of the night. 
And it occurs to me 
I've always been a stranger to myself.
The enigma in the doorway across the street.
My windows. My keys. My locks. even my old car
But always looking up at my own place 
as if someone else lived there instead of me.
A man with no return address on his homelessness. 
As if I were always catching a glimpse of myself 
going around the next corner 
and I'm the tail I'm trying to lose.
Or giving the occasional mirror 
caught totally off guard 
cold chills in passing 
like a ghost with unknown enterprises of its own.
My freedom enclosed 
within the sum of its limits 
I live in an elsewhere zone 
where the mystery of what I'm doing here 
goes to extremes 
like a tent city outside 
the vacancy of an unoccupied metropolis
of anti-social landlords
to prove I have a right 
to the portable threshold of my homelessness. 
I'm beached like a birch bark canoe
that isn't going anywhere 
on the shoals of my stream of consciousness
trying to figure out who's doing the saying 
and who's doing the listening.
Though most people think 
one is the spitting image of the other's reflection 
verbal expression is not thought
and you can't hear it before you say it.
Even too late for the drunks to be out 
I like the way the half-hearted moonlight 
interprets my face through its fingertips
as if I were having my portrait done in braille. 
What could that look like 
when you've connected all the dots 
if not an eclipse or a new moon? 
Take your pick.
And I may be somewhat out of touch 
with how dark things have become 
but I know this much 
this much at least I know.
Worse than despair .. more than your depressed 
is learning how not to care. 
I mean what have you got left 
when all's been said and done and gone 
if not for a few old reflexive delusions 
in a holy war of tribal mirages 
that have made a habit of your heart
just as drugs become the cosmology of junkies.
It's no more absurd 
to be left standing like an echo in a doorway 
long after the house has been torn down 
than it is to paint realistic watercolours in the rain
en plein air.
I thought I had a message once 
worthy of descending doves.
I could feel the wind under the dragon's wings 
open like the firedoor to a furnace full of prophets.
And the words were mine true enough
until I realized how much life like art 
is totally plagiarized from the medium it creates in
and how imperative it was 
to be reborn from your mother-tongue 
like a whole new language of evolving memes
if you want to be taken at your word 
even in hell as in heaven 
you know how to speak for yourself 
without resorting to paracletes 
even when you're persuasively certain 
no one can understand you,
Every word might contain a dead metaphor 
but when mine aren't demonically possessed
and speaking in tongues 
they're buzzing around the azaleas 
like hummingbirds and bees 
sipping black kool-aid in Jonestown. 
I start out writing like a new moon 
but by the time it's done with me 
I'm a total eclipse in an ink pot, 
indelibly. 
That's why I'm sitting here in the dark
trying not to adulterate the light 
with cosmic thoughts of all night streetlamps 
in an empty parking lot 
where everyone overpays a price
for their little square of time and space. 
I've got a digital alarm clock 
with three and a half numbers that glow in the dark 
like an informant trying to warn me 
before it's way too late for all of us 
to adjust my time-zone and dial it back.
To when? 
To when it was a better world? 
To when I was a better man? 
To the last chance I had to become one?