some spleen

the night's sullen candor,
purpled & inveterate.

1.
irascible moon, high &
lofty, powdering its face
just to disdain its suitours.
how proud! how haughty!
she tilts her face to the sky,
uses it for a mirror -

2.
manic sun,
halitosic on the streets below.
teeth long since rotted out.
vibrates in the heat-static of the sky,
spits & convulses
like an apoplectic madman -

3.
the white capillaries
of lightning snake across
the gray cheeks
of the bulbous clouds;
thunder provides the soundtrack
to their rhexis

4.
the wind:
a hundred invisible strangers
rushing importantly by -
fearful, frustrated, unconcerned,
solipsistic -

& the philosopher-drunks
all imitating Diogenes,
frothing at the mouth,
inventing new dances
on their sojourns from one bar
to the next -
from tango to dervish

5.
and,
inevitably,
the brontolalia
of blood rushing in the ears,
the insistent rhythm of the heart
seizing dominion over the head -

(a coup de tete!)

- & again!
the vulcanized needle of lightning,
sewing up the skin of everything
with its effulgency,
disdaining the gray hush
of dusk & dim,
yet despite,

"luxe, calme, et volupté"
a half-second later.