“midnight, dawn, dusk”

Tohm Bakelas

1.

Downtown, after midnight,
along Broadway, under
artificial light, past benches
the clocktower, and empty
parking lots, there are ghosts
that walk again. They are the
lost ones, the forgotten ones,
the ones without names. They
are the ones we locked out of
ourselves because we are alive.

2.

At dawn, in the cemetery, where
tombstones look like grey heads
protruding from beneath blankets
of powdered white snow, the sun,
blinded by its own radiance, was
naïve to autumn’s dying breath.
And winter’s bitter beauty cracked
its cold whip across the faces of
the living while the world was
frozen in glass-like frost.

3.

As if we could rewrite history,
as if we could turn back time,
we romanticize death by chasing
ghosts in the bottom of bottles.
These autumn days are numbered,
marked by crumbling daylight
that reflects in broken shards of
green glass beneath blue dusk.
We, who are forever cursed,
accept the night as our sun.

---

Author’s Note: Shortly before midnight I found myself on an inebriated journey, leaving my local watering hole, heading for my hometown. I decided to kick around my sanity while stumbling through the streets of my youth, past ghosts and memories I long forgot about until I eventually hit the cemetery. I thought about life and death and how it’s all one big fucking mess. After spending some time there, I checked the time and knew the sun would be arriving shortly, so I decided to go home. 

---

Tohm Bakelas is a social worker in a psychiatric hospital. He was born in New Jersey, resides there, and will die there. His poems have been printed widely in journals, zines, and online publications all over the world. He is the author of several collections of poetry, including “Cleaning the Gutters of Hell” (Zeitgeist Press, 2023) and “The Ants Crawl in Circles” (Bone Machine, Inc., 2024). He runs Between Shadows Press.