Reading Poems Late at Night

It's good fun and all that,
reading poems, alone, late at night,

with a glass of whiskey, maybe,
on your nightstand and the radio tuned
to the one station you can get out there
(on the high seas of the lower Midwest)
that plays jazz or classical or even some of that
dreamy, ambient space music stuff,

that is until you come across that one poem
you surely had to have known (hoped even)
was lurking out there, somewhere,
in the staticky dark,

waiting for someone like you to come along
and kick you square in the guts.

And you don't even bother to finish your drink,
but instead, just turn out the lights and stare up
into the dark, for what seems like hours,

at where the walls and ceiling may
or may not be.