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The clock strikes twelve–
but there is no chime,
just a blue-tinted glow
and the steady whir of the
telltale processor heart.

Yet the monsters and the demons
and the creatures of the peripheral
night stir as they always do.
If reality is a fabric they slide in
edgewise
between the seams
rustling impatiently but slipping out
of my vision like
phosphenes
when I rub my eyes.

If I stare too long I am lost.

“You’re late”, I say,
for I have been waiting
all through the long hours of the day
to conjure their lucidity–
to feel the thrum of words,
phrases, fragments,
incantations trembling
at my fingertips,
potent.

I’ve heard that names are power–
words are power,
and with each choreographed tap
I thread them, glittering,
onto amulets and into dreamcatchers
hoping to shape the nameless dark.

When will these midnight vigils
and clandestine rendezvouses with
the other side
lead to a convergence?

You have not paid the price.

This I know.
Yet what that price is,
and what pact I am meant to say,
I do not know,
I do not know!
As always I am enveloped whole
by Lethe’s black waters
and it begins again.