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help me haul this night 
 
dedicated to patrick porter
 
help me haul the night 
even if its empty counters are made of butter
and its hallways crawl with cowardly ink
even if our hands are like winter chicken feet
and we have to turn all the store signs upside-down
just to spell our names correctly as we walk through town
filling fountains with prophecies vague enough to come true
 
help me haul the whole night
because the windshield is covered with lazy pigeons
and there's newspaper ink in their pale feces
staircases covered with plain sleep
that prevents me from the higher floors
elevators like shoes kicked off by gods
basement holding slimming legs held open by lightbulbs
refrigerators making a mockery of coffins
chalk light soaking in motor oil as the dryness of labeled streets 
is murdered by bursting pipes or
maybe i had a friend with a needle or a kindly gun
walking toward my bedroom with more than one shamed body
my life hating everything calm
as the clock blares the newscast that has been the same since my birth
as neighbors snicker falsely in their sleep
at each other's deadly lottery numbers
 
help me haul the whole godfucking night
find a song to wrap all the city-reaching bridges 
in tidal waves of erroneous concrete
the long walks that always lead to the same rubbery plateau
flat landscape covered with unused plates in unopened cabinets
instead of the god with hair longer than a church service
who you wanted to leap from a tree that her feet set on fire
 
help me haul this night
that makes fun of all shovels
and leaves icepicks
at the bottom of public-property lakes
no less deep because each little wave is a dollar
no less acidic because our footsteps laugh at gravel
pebbles that would be knives if they could
and my sad hat filled with piano teeth
that i am traveling to replace
 
somebody pull a chair up to the legless table for me
and i'll cough you a story 
that may seem funny because it's young
but pounds the table with fists
that defy the quiet smells of cedar and sanitized metals
made to hold in a hand that doesn't think to stab
a hand that will haul the whole night.
 
be with me in the gutted piano before every dawn
with me in the teeth taken from an animal too large to live
that we will never meet, 
but haul the whole reversed night.

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