TD 1
THE NIGHT WE CALLED IT A DAY Day and Night play t
ricks on me now, like identical twins, jokers gloating at my loosening grip on the exchange rate of their slippery currencies. The only commission charged is confusion. The Day rolls into town whistling silence, a circus juggling empty streets, ghost trains and traffic lights blinking at invisible cars. The glass façade of an abandoned office, a Hall of Mirrors bouncing back my shrunken world. A weed sprouts defiantly like a bouncer at the door of a shut pub letting in only the regular ghouls. Foxes dare come closer; their curfew suspended. My rusted jewel and darlin’ Dublin is a parched Atlantis, studded with the algae of Luas tracks, random people scurry like plankton through confused currents. I palm scroll the braille of the day trying to read for signs that the day has unbolted the night’s stables and let loose its mares. They gallop around me now, lassoing headlines of plague. The Devil saddles his horse and rides at noon. Supermarket aisles are Halloween parades, all the streets a silent Samhain where we trick or treat our parents through window panes and see them dressed up in State sewn caterpillar costumes. Kafka is retching as so many wake, branded as insects. The schools are silent save for the laughter of the Stolen Children, gone now to the Waters and the Wild. The Night’s Generals have staged a Coup declaring martial dream law on the day. Eyes bruised with screen time, mattress moored, docked in my bed, in the midnight hour. And there in the cascade of sleep I set sail to that archipelago of once maligned mundanities, chance encounters and the now, almost erotic thrill of a traffic jam. Before opening my eyes again on the shore of another waking dream. 20