Nights Like Tonight

Breathe baby
Nights like tonight 
(When cold clothes the bones
And flesh is just fistful of snow;
Numb and delicate)
Are rare

The stars wheel
Don’t they?
Like an umbrella on our head
Once I knew Big Dipper, Cassiopeia, and Ursa Major
But now when I look up
The stars tremble 
Beneath the tears upon the rim of my eyes 
Dear lord, am I drowning?
While reaching for the sky beneath my feet
Like ink in water

A long while ago
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood
And sorry that I could not travel both
I turned back 
Away from the scintillating offerings
From oft repeated quotes
And ever appearing jargon 
I turned back from literature
From Shakespeare’s sweet sonnets
From Orwell’s orphic auguries  
From the cold contours of Plato’s caves
From the new nothingness of Nietzsche
I turned back   
To the primitive mind of mirages
Of breathing seas
And singing trees 
But if I were to begin my philosophy 
It would end with this sentence; The whole world is a theory
Words using words to make sense of the words
So I write with chalk on the paper
And with pen on the blackboard 
To see if the meaning 
Is lost in the act of asking (It is)

So, breathe baby
Nights like tonight 
(When the cold clothes the bones
And flesh is just fistful of snow;
Numb and delicate)
Are rare
And in the end here
I have 
No melancholy to spare