Meet the wall.
The wall is the end—
deeper density,
soft charcoal melt into
metal door black;

the wall is grit and
corrosion and is tough
enough; the wall is always
painted red and lurid until
all colour peels off and it is
only itself, black, fading
into the end of light.

The wall settles into the way
of winter, first harbinger;
the wall is the back of the
fire, the ashes rise in the last
heat before the wall falls in
and that’s it folks, show’s over.

Sky crouches into curtain fallen
an extra foot over the ground;
sun lies crumpled script page
in the prompter’s booth, and it’s
not even bleeding; timpani pound,
horns blare down the last wall as
warmth is concealed through deceit
(indeed, we suspected.) “Sun decamps”
read the headlines. News to no one.

Smudged and wet, lying like
yesterday’s newspaper
in the gutter, autumn comes
to this—the sheet metal days,
the abandoned lot surrounded by
wall of cheap metal, and we must
endure even this as we survey
this decrepit landscape—the dying of light.

<This ends my 9th book, Autumn (which is really one quarter of my 4 Seasons.) So be it. There will be a short hiatus and my tenth book will begin, tentatively titled “Punk Pomes” — stay tuned.>

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