writing from
Scars Publications

Audio/Video chapbooks cc&d magazine Down in the Dirt magazine books

 

Dead Hours

Jon Petruschke

Addicts lumber
after the bars close
until dawn.
Recovering addicts
call these dead
hours.

What really is being
a contributing member
of society?
They work
toward their own
demise: hustling, tricking,
shooting, twitching, kicking,
living the hierarchy
of needs so top-heavy,
there's never motion
for promotion.
Staring at the sidewalk
for tiny rocks to smoke,
thinking they can't all
be pebbles.
Stiffening so the wind
doesn't drift their weeks
of unwashed stink
near a pedestrian.
Hungry enough to eat
dog-shit, long after
the first distinct acid trips,
and the junkie blur.
Long after the traffic lights
stop paying attention,
unwinding with red
and yellow blinking
for no one, especially not them.
In the dead hours
breaths are barely
there to draw.
Exhaust and air
so stagnant it breathes you.
The clatter of cages
rising from storefronts
still in the dark,
but soon the rushing
hours will begin,
without meaning,
around them.



Scars Publications


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