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Philip Nikolayev

Lights Out

I have nothing really to confess
How can you disbelieve me on this one
The lights are almost out no one waits
For me now even you are asleep
Why come home at all
I should have stayed
Macking on ghosts on the sidewalk
Under bolts of lightning but no rain
The meaning of life is empty
Our words are how we fill time
I stumble on a whirring fan in the dark
Grab by the throat
The bottleneck of my drear

Philip Nikolayev’s third collection of poems, Monkey Time, is the winner of the 2001 Verse Prize (judge Lyn Hejinian) and is forthcoming from Verse Press this fall. He is also the editor and publisher of Fuclrum: an annual of poetry and aesthetics, whose first issue has just appeared (mid-2002).

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