Dawn Interrupted Poem by Noah Smits

Alleys dark with slinking shapes
that crawl along the fire escapes,
the grainy mesh of sullen soot
that floats in flurries underfoot,
and every curbstone, gray upon
this dormant background, wait for dawn.

Hope befalls, with hidden sun,
the mortar and the martyrs shunned,
alas in tandem—yet these hands
hold damply, desperately their gun—
as, stunned, I rose from slumberlands
to fright and scandal all in one.

Weapon—tool—equipment mine,
is yours the only light to shine?
The clocks have slowed, the vents have shut;
recirculated air is what
my lungs contain—I feel not well,
all senses tuned to dim pastel.

Someone's tampered with my room
but I'm alone inside the gloom
of these apartments dank and spare.
I clutch my gun and wonder whom
should I suspect? I shout, "Who's there, "
then with my searching I resume.

Waking ripped me from the dark
and thrust me from my hovel stark
to streets below still cloaked in gray,
awaiting change from night to day
that seems to stutter, sputter, stop.
"This ain't right, " opines a cop.

Kettle-steam in reams unrolling
flattens out and settles, holing
up in every bare crevasse
of this great crowd that gathers, strolling
past each other, dazed en masse
but finding grinding mobs consoling.

Fog our sheath, we grind our teeth;
the rats respond in kind beneath.
"Who stalled our time? Who stole our sun?
Has anybody got a gun? "
I nodded, aimed my barrel high,
and fired a round up in the sky.

Silence passed, then deep unrest;
I dropped the gun, my mind distressed.
Around me rang demotic sighs
as, though I stayed, most others left.
Hope yet befalls a time that's nigh;
I hope this hope's a promise kept.