Who's afraid of the dark

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Who’s afraid of the dark

I’m not afraid of the dark, I don’t blubber when bulbs aren’t lit. I swish, twirl in any murk, shout hosannas in every apocalypse, pish tosh to all pretentiousness. I look in your terrified, dusky grey eyes and offer surprises, not ‘full-of-it’ lies but midnight flights of fancy. Stretching my hairy ballerina thighs, I try this ink black leotard on for size:

Unlike Bruce S in all earnestness, I am immune to too-much sanguine awkwardness. Crooners only unnerve me, disturbing the common good with hypersensitive artistic suggestibility—ack, ability wasted on pedestrian emotions, inciting popular commotion, wannabe Horaces diluted to Hallmark.

I’m not one to boast of blood, it spurts inside us all; so what if drops sometime escape, it doesn’t mean we die. Get a grip and grab my plate, and eat up what I fry: if I get cut, I bandage up—I don’t go inside.

I’m no tall drink of water, I don’t spill out over bar-rails, sopped up by cooing waitresses ‘just doing their jobs’, or teeny bopping pigeons fawning online at heart-throbs, raising ruckuses like roustabouts over big-top circus freaks with an entourage of thousands, monopolizing chambermaid attention in dime a dozen five star hotels

I am the five in the morning bell
I am the hole that sinks the well
the van outside the cheap motel
I’m Gargamel and Azrael

When power’s down and night crests, I ask, What had you possessed? Well I guess under duress a melting ice box and memories of a dumb flat screen could offer comfort, but if that’s your final answer I am unimpressed. No, until you learn you get no rest; surcease your bleating, your entreating, and get dressed: Midnight doesn’t dance with you unless you look your best.

Don’t ask me who you are; I’ll tell you who you are. If you must ask, then it’s sure that, sir, you are no superstar. But the question is not ‘who am I?’—that’s a worm that digs up lies. The question, if you’ll follow through, the question is ‘what do you do?’

What do you do? What do you do? .What you do, it’s up to you.

What do I do? Well, sir, let me tell you:

In lighter days I raise the curtain
In colder days I light the boiler
In yesterdays I talked about tomorrow
In everyday ways to remind you of today

But at no time ever have I feared the dark.