The Night

Night, the toad,
sits on my chest.

He is fat and heavy, sluggish
from slurping up blood and excrement--thank you--
beer, ham, cleaning out the shower drains,

sweeping the floors, running the
garbage disposal, clearing his
throat before delivering a lengthy speech;

during which, I fall asleep but

there were bodies
in there. There were small
bodies in his mouth. There was the
mud of music. He makes me sick.

The night
makes confetti
out of blades of light.

They sneeze white and golden,
I watch them
as they dance up there on the ceiling.

Sleep assembles itself.
It takes slow black steps
through the wires of hair
that have continued to grow
for years
over my torso.

The cabbies
out there
read their newspapers and their heads
bend backwards
slowly
into the dark,

the cats cross the street, stronger
than any of the humans in it,
somehow wise,
somehow sharpened to a point,
abase me in my bed.


The fat toad
then
holds a cigar
between his fleshy lips. He wears his
hat. His belly drags over my yellow body.

This toad of night worships
me.

He worships my
head as his
emperor, and yet
he abuses me, hungers for me.

His hunger is immensely visible.
It is in a glass orb, it is so present, it is like
perfume.

And the light
across the way, high over
the stone and the ivy,
the twisted ferns, the iron stairs,
is still on
somehow.

It’s been on
now
for three days
and three nights
without going off.

Sometimes a figure
passes by

and sometimes
it stays,
it seems to go on between floors,
through the floor, flying between floors, this figure,

an imagined
creature
of the toad
of night’s fantasy.