"Damn the imagined night..."

Damn the imagined night—

A perilous guide indeed,

Laden high with smoke

And broken mirrors and encrusted dreams.

Curse the blissful smog!

A champion of disease,

Barreling forth with unrequited,

Bittersweet, infatuated ease.

Blame the darling fear,

Which whispers from our knees—

A parasitic fiction

That will needlessly and ceaselessly increase.

Cry the vanished clarity,

The attenuated truth.

Whatever we had dared to be

Has died and now been buried with our youth.

Flee the poetic vice,

And all its starving progeny.

Hollow, they are helpless,

Affixed to that most fleeting, fragile prophecy.

Confront this dire enemy

And everything now in the aether.

Reified with fiery force,

The great palatial mind will quaver.

Call upon your courage now!

Abandon here your guide.

Reject the toxic wonderings;

Step o’er the brink and leave behind the night.