The Night We Called it a Day. A poem by Billy O Hanluain

Day and Night play tricks
on me now,
like identical twins,
jokers gloating at
my loosening grip on
the exchange rate of
their slippery currencies.
The only commission charged
is confusion.
The Day rolls into town
whistling silence,
a circus juggling empty streets,
ghosts trains and
traffic lights blinking at invisible
cars. The glass façade of an abandoned
office, a Hall of Mirrors bouncing back
my shrunken world.
A weed sprouts defiantly like
a bouncer at the door of a shut pub
letting in only the regular ghouls.
Foxes dare come closer, their curfew suspended.
My rusted jewel and darlin’ Dublin is a parched
Atlantis, studded with the algae of Luas tracks,
random people scurry like plankton through
confused currents.
I palm scroll the braille of the day trying to read for
signs that the day has unbolted
the night’s stables and let loose its mares.
They gallop around me now, lassoing
headlines of plague. The Devil saddles his horse and
rides at noon. Supermarket aisles are masked
Halloween parades, all the streets a silent Samhain
where we trick or treat our parents through window
panes and see them dressed up in
State sewn caterpillar costumes.
Kafka is retching as so many wake, branded
as insects. The schools are silent save for
the laughter of the Stolen Children, gone now to
the Waters and the Wild.
The Night’s Generals have staged a Coup
declaring martial dream law on the day.
Eyes bruised with screen time,
mattress moored, docked in my bed, in
the midnight hour.
And there in the cascade of sleep
I set sail to that archipelago of once
maligned mundanities, chance encounters
and the now, almost erotic thrill of
a traffic jam.
Before opening my eyes again
on the shore of another
waking dream.