Lucid

The plastic factory always smells
worse when it’s wet, and it’s been raining
for the past five days at least now.

The sun looks silver through
the foggy sky to all those landscapers
cutting random knolls of grass
placed along the highway.
The blades don’t do well when the ground
is damp and so they have to pass
over everything repeatedly.

Pigeons blink slowly with their gray eyes
looking out from where they’ve hidden
for the worst of it, and it is almost time
to gather up the night crawlers.
Their worn down talons closing around
the gummy skin of some lost worm
is like a high to them, I hope at least,
I guess it could be nothing
but a hunger.

In the tallest hotel the sandman is wearing
a shirt and tie with the sleeves rolled up,
and he is sliding the edge of a crisp hundred
across the nipples of a twenty two year old
waitress he could not leave in the basement
where the bar is.

After one night she no longer dreams
of anything.