Friday Night Hour

Is it spectacle I’m avoiding
in a logic of surrogacy,

pharmakon gauntlet trees,
corrosive golds, birds in flexed design,

lifting, standing in for an evening
gathered with couples

or taking in a film? Bite me,
charred gusts, as I, solo,

open a window to light’s shank,
to Venus, lone & salt-stung earring.

The etched in wretched. Sure.
Inward hardly mean no drama.

But it’s a different kind of transit:
day’s demise that shows us we’re alive.