POEM | FREE VERSE

House of the Midnight Sun

Inspired by The Twilight Zone

The sun hovers as skyscrapers sever the moon, hanging high noon in the black light of midnight,

the sun never sleeping on Bourbon Street,

where I’m thirsty in this forever summer and high humidity, painting the scenery from my balcony, blistering and basking in jazz and Sazerac, muting the traffic, swallowing sound for survival.

I strip off my smock and weep with whiskey, drinking drops during a water shortage,

the sweat salting my forehead, pasting polyester to my sizzling skin, my hair singed, humanity rationed in one-hour blocks.

The radio, belting the breaking bulletins of keeping doors locked and protecting ourselves, blasts our forecasted fate —

spend your lives in sin and misery.

I’m melting in mercury, ignoring the imposters of first responders and arguing with looters, answering the door with a loaded revolver, creating cold with cobalt on canvas, coloring waterfalls to dive in the destruction of the climate’s corruption.

We abused the moon and deserve this doom, Earth changing orbit, incinerating our ignorance, too late for forgiveness,

the acrylic dripping, mixing mistakes in grays, my palette poured on the pyre, pelting the procession with panic and pessimism.

We never learned, and now we all burn.

When I wake, my fever breaks, and I’m bitten by winter’s wind, sobered by snow, can’t blow anymore smoke with brushstrokes, no longer drunk on turpentine.

But I know

We Gotta Get Out of This Place, where the sun refused to shine.

This poem is inspired by “The Midnight Sun” from The Twilight Zone, Season 3, Episode 10 and contains lyrics from “House of The Rising Sun” and “We Gotta Get Out of This Place” by The Animals.

Spoiler: Earth has changed orbit and is moving closer to the sun. Norma, a painter, suffers in the heat with her neighbor. In the end, Norma awakes from a feverish dream, relieved to discover Earth is not experiencing extreme heat. However, Earth is actually moving farther away from the sun and getting colder.

The eclipse was uneventful for me, but Moon Mama Claire Kelly suggested I write about it anyway. I didn’t want to feel her wrath after watching this episode.