criminal on the run from thought, down slips the sun: you ought
to check into your mind’s hotel – the appearance certainly does not sell –
but the registration desk has a bell to ding, attached to a string
of vivid consequence; since the rates are flat, bring in the troupes that
keep you company in your rooms; though the concierge looms
in shadows of a different lobby, this staff has the hobby
of thundering through the halls to pounce upon the walls
of an elevator always going down to pursue an abstract noun
lost in a different basement altogether, where dust too is the forecast of weather
since the shadows dress like a maid, no guests there stayed
your mind’s hotel became a vacant place where the living began to race,
by moving brooms without the touch, for the dead, while you feverishly slept in bed
the skeleton roomkey clutched in a hand that no door would touch
where drinks are mixed for the sake of an aging bartender to make
just one more vivid potion for the tourist, trapped in a motion
not entirely unlike your own, criminal.