Night #2 Poem by Oliver Rodriguez

Somewhere, a noise is heard.
Silenced outbursts contained and allowed.
A dog’s freedom of speech,
Hounding the silence with a pounding heart.
A small quarrel between cars.
A quiet explosion, and then a screech.
And then nothing.
Nothing is seen, nothing felt, no-one aware.
No-one.

All that is there, is timid noise,
Like a cat’s purr,
And another whirr in my mind.
All are separated by slumber for some several hours,
Before waking.

I tug at the deceased curtains,
And slide open a small fissure to peer through.
Someone sees my wide-open eyes and furry ears the size of a photograph.
My nose tastes a slither of something.
The smell of the breeze is a silent voice breathing into my face.
The moon, far off, is a single eye,
Rolling around the sky.
The stars pattern a wrap-around blanket.
Overwhelming whispers dissipate in deaf ears.

Micro-organisms cling to a moving, warm-blooded body circulating the sun,
For that is where they live.
You taste blood in your veins and lines slice your palms,
A man with arms straining against a rock,
Heaves inside your cavern.
Opening and closing
Your lungs, eternally.
He carries the weight
Of your heart.

And the night continues on,
Like an angler fish counting the dust particles in outer-space.
Perhaps somewhere across the seas in another place something is stirring.
Maybe sometime something will happen.
But I am overcome by a drowsy calm,
And I fall to, returning to hibernation.