Watching Too

Freestyle Poems

Late into the night it watches me doing
my necessary duties, complaining on the
phone, reading in bed, setting my alarms,
making preparations for the coming tomorrow,
like an estranged lover or forbidden totem
it speaks knowingly to me and to all listeners
of urgent, erratic and moving horrors that
express themselves in vivid, nocturnal reruns.
Dawn brings its timed verbose voice in
collapsing forms of empty, couture and dying
lives messaged in improper attire and profane
enunciations.
In the bathroom, clearing away breakfast,
opening and answering letters and cabinets,
preening my fashioned wares, changing sheets
and fluffing pillows, unplugging cords,
checking lights and declawing the
electronically animated machinations to off
while I launch out in silence to my daily
labors.
The eight-hour grind done and home again,
I take it up and click it on, robotically,
before coat, clothes or shoes are tossed
onto the mid-century chair, the door is
locked and chained or curtains drawn.
Hearing its kindred song is all that’s
needed for security and exhalation from
my chaotically pressured and active musings.
Even the familiar musk is mine alone, a
smoothing of my senses.
The sofa rests while I from it, madly press
through visual channels, tantalizing my mind’s
eye with the webbed syndication of prostituted
hypocrites in glitzy chiseled veneer.
Hours gone by before drunken half sleep forces
a rising to the queen’s bed while the remote
hides within the sofa folds.
Not wanting my feet to feel the cold wood floor
I resolutely sigh, tiptoe to face the screened
images, press its buttons and watch as my
solitary reflection fades like dying, flickering
candles.
It’s a struggle to turn off my squared lover.
Pausing to listen to the stillness knifed at by
screaming neighbors, I kneel, slip into prayer
and thanks at the head of my bed but covertly
desire not to miss a single happening of the
echoing world.

more by DEBRA BISHOP

Photograph by Doug Robichaud

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