Queen Of The Demonweb Pits Poem by Ernest Hilbert

The deal feels wrong. Feeling's gone. Or has it?
Are you holding or are you holding out?
At this frantic hour, what can a word mean?
Would you stay so you can do one more hit
Or take the last bag, safe in your pocket,
To lock up back in your apartment unseen
And alone... no, you stay with those who can't
Stop pacing and talking again and again through
The same stories—are they the same stories? —
Now that the heavy curtains won't keep slants
Of aspiring light out, and the things you
Said are said by another, and worries
Snare your mind in a wire tangle of too quick
Thought quickly thought and quickly thought again,
Because left alone or leaving you will greet old fears.
So you stab at a smile but you're getting sick,
Then an eerie half-sight—at dawn as a child
You woke and stepped out and took in—oh, years
Of buried embarrassments start to flow—
But no—there is the sunlight where you stepped,
Bright as a supernova on the new snow
Where you curled up in white so soft you slept.