All cheap motels possess
that terrible smell of dispossession,
dislodgement, airless sleep, and plastic crucifixion,
an owlish, shapeless face
behind the double-glass window,
the smell of life unlived,
of old rugs and dusty sorrow.

What can be dimmer than
the night of dreams that followed
the thick, tenacious odor
of the sleepy hollow.

You leave behind
this street and a frozen meadow,
the only blinking light.
You leave behind
a vacant cube of the borrowed,
of sealed and silent space,
where one stays overnight,

where time is seized,
the pool is dry and cracked,
the phone is dead,
TV black and white,
the corner pizza place closed
last winter
and the street sign says: Do Not Enter.
 

Dark Room

I look into the window:
the room is dark, only the center
is dimly lit, some soft,
flickering object sits
on the square table, and 
who knows what is
left unseen in the dark corners.

The room absorbs the light
from the twilight street,
from warm windows
of the other houses, from
a passerby’s heart, although
the only passerby is me.

I am standing outside,
watching through the window
the object on the table. 
My strained eyes see it 
as a flower, blossoming,
withering, turning into an old photograph
of a man. He looks from the picture
straight into my eyes.