See a Light

It's one of those strange nights; when sitting out on the stoop can lead to weird misgivings about the nature of virtually everything and you might even start to wonder why a young girl would be out walking a dog after midnight, all alone, right past your house, in shorts; walking slowly, giving you plenty of chances to notice every subtle nuance of the muscles in her thighs, calves and buttocks.
Ah…but there's a song in my heart and a notion in my head but my hands are idle and we all know who makes short work of circumstances like that. So I knew the time was Ripe.
"Sing," they'll say and I know that if the right lyrics come out of me…well, I'll probably end up on some chain-gang down on Mason Street; where they pretend not to notice you and act like they didn't quite catch your name but you still get suspicious when they don't ask you not to come back. And all the girls wear too much make-up and smoke cigarettes that dangle from their heavy and half-charmed lips.
And, after all, I knew I didn't belong there, just like they didSo I snuck back to where I felt safe again and decided to write a Love Poem to the shadowy fear that leans heavily on the lust in my heart and makes me crazy with longing every time the Moon is hanging at just the Right Angle in the sky.
Under the September night, many ghosts will rise from their respective graves and spend too many hours haunting me in ways that make me wonder what, exactly, is happening in all the places I used to know so well.
And they all still remember my name and know just what to do when I break the seal of their doors in the dead of night with a blank stare and trembling hands and start calling for all the ills that good money can still buy where men are men and women know when the Time is Right.
But that was a lifetime ago, eh? Sure it was and there's no sense pretending about it all now…we've got bigger Fish to fry tonight and we'll never get any closer to Finished if we keep lashing about looking for a lot of loose ends that never really got tied up for reasons that were never really made clear.
And you can't figure this thing out if you can't get clarity. And some say that Clarity is just what good Love Poems are made of…
But which counts more, the Love or the Poem? Can you have one without the other?
What's a screwdriver without the orange juice? Vodka? Well…that's just vodka they'll say…and they'd be right. It is just vodka…but if you add the orange juice…well.
But maybe there's something else to it…some spiritual element that we could, perhaps, derive from books or mystic writings or ancient and, as yet, undiscovered codices that are still lying hidden in some sun-baked cave or abandoned tomb.
Then again, we could all just get together and let it all Hang Out, so to speak; you know, just let the Groove get into us and feel our own way around this thing in the Long Run; lots of touch therapy and group encounters and sensitivity training.
Or…we could just get hammered and watch the cars go by while we act like we're the ones moving and all the cars are really standing still.
And maybe they are. Who can say?
But that's where love and poetry tend to go after you spend too much time trying to see a light that never shines.