Poetry: 5:03 AM (for Steve Dalachinsky)

5:03 AM

Photo and lay-out by Sherry Rubel; excerpt of my poetry

(for Steve Dalachinsky)

3:15AM. Shhh. Speak nothing now.

Speak not.

There’s a fading din beneath the well of silence.

It turns envious the darkling.

The sun now rises later than it once did,

Doesn’t it?

4:37. September’s torrid dampness cedes to nothing

Here in Brooklyn, but

The chill of the Long Island Sound

Steve and I performing together, Brecht Forum approx 2014

Freezes the poetry in time, like

Burroughs in Morocco,

So far from home.

4:55, this day which bordered no sleep,

Mind festering, precious pain.

The sun must rise later than it once did.

Tell me it does.

The call of gulls falls deaf on hospital walls,

Where strange machinery turns, tabulates,

And sways through

Cross-rhythms of tap, scrape,

And sob.

My photo of Steve, Bowery Electric, June 2019

A dancehall of wire brushes ignites

Booming skins and shimmering bronze,

Gassing the flame of sauntering yesterday,

As after-hours haze covets

A thicket sound in vivid black

Downtown.

The call of Gayle in the wild, he, Streets the Clown

Seething through tubes and drips, submerged in

The unfettered, busking improvisation.

And the final night erupts joyously, leading you

South of Houston.

The colors, the shapes which fall from your pen

Cast a reflection of then into tomorrow.

Many tomorrows,

Poet Laureate of Outside.

5:03AM. The sun halts in its place, as

The mist purples

Over Spring Street.

The clouds are but a

Painted backdrop.

-John Pietaro, 9/16/19, 11:52pm,

Brooklyn NY

"5:03 AM" was first published in  John Pietaro's chapbook SMOKE RINGS (2019)