RAFAEL VIGILANTICS

MIDNIGHT'S MIDNIGHT

A rabbit sits with sunburnt eyes and looks across the sunburnt field 

its body springing into action like the 4th of July

Its brown legs run colors, like fires on cylinders, that have always run

just the context of the running has changed

across the native cob corn houses

what chases

atomic, a con-man, a country, the way the earth sometimes pillages the sky

and like the memory, the mud dries

Jackie Robinson, the first black player to break the color barrier since the monetization 

of desegregation, joins the Brooklyn Dodgers, faith and money mix but never settle for less than servitude until their stomach is sick and needs to be filled again with the rush or the numb or the high

While something in Roswell crashes like a hungover heiress to a mattress company, round 

and flat with bright eyes

The CIA is born, the sound barrier is broken, David Bowie is loaned by god on high

Iggy Pop sees his first sunrise  

Its 1947, but it’s 7 minutes to midnight

A fox feels the pavement in Ohio for the first time, his paws like the warmth 

but his nose can't understand the scented stench of black tar and how it can lay 

like it owns the place, where a mountain of Black Eyes and daises once held up 

with grace the spirit of the springtime

Gerard discovers the second of fourteen moons of Neptune, with far eyes

oil shimmers in the closeness of car lights, booms, beacons and beckons in the reflection 

of water mixing with doom and like a dipstick we begin to push our fingers listless 

into the Caspian Sea

we offer, hint hint, nothing in return

George Orwell's 1984 is published and burned

Billy Joel is born, LEGO's and 45s and Polaroids get alive

NATO is born, Lead Belly dies

It’s 1949 But its 3 minutes to midnight

A hawk moves out, unsettled by the whisper of a downwinder, a butterfly moves in, a snake eats the egg of a long lost blue jay

and like a drone yet to be born on a prison planet in a housing crisis

nature just buzzes with excitement  

Sir Edmund summits mount Everest and Watson steals the photograph that reveals 

the double helix, as Rosalind gets cancer and dies in obscurity with sealed lips 

and the brand new color television has more eyes on these moments 

than those of colors themselves, as they sing and sink and swell under the black backdrop 

of civil rights and we fail 

with all the fever of our first time

Playboy’s first issue hits shelves like rung bells on tissue boxes and the body of Marilyn 

is commodified and offered naked against a red satin coffer

as the pages bring two dimensional lust to life

Iggy gets inspired, Stalin dies, Cyndi Lauper cries for the first time

It’s 1953 but its 2 minutes to midnight

A snail clings to a birch tree in the firelight, a firefight emerges as activist after activist after neighbor turned brother turned body in the street is murdered

four girls’ breath goes missing as a Baptist church is bombed and burned and the word of god goes wordless

yet still in the silence, a bee sting hurts, and the pain never feels worthless

and in the corner of a bar on a corner street in Birmingham Alabama, Robert Chambliss drunkenly mouths the word "Dynamite" and smiles at the damage

a loaf of bread is 23 cents but everywhere it is, men go to jail for even less.

Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman to see outer space, looks down at the earth 

and gets a view of her place and wishes she could give the gift 

of the 25 thousand miles per hour every woman would need to escape

she braces for impact. Kennedy leaves his brains on the seat in the back 

there's a bloodstained wiretap on the pages of Luther's dream. Michael Jordon is born Tarantino is already bored

Sylvia Plath puts her head in the talons of ovens and asks for the mask to be torn

Houston is born, hears her own voice for the first time in this world  

Huxley trips over the pages of his own death, brave, becomes new and uncurls

comets are hurled

It's 1963 but its 12 minutes to midnight

A domestic dog rolls in the tall grass, his fox colored fur collecting the holy mass of August 

for the third time in his life as the first page appears on the web, no color, no cumming

no despair in images, no anxiety, no richness, no activity, no promises eating their own tale

 just words on a screen distantly signaling that the internet is here, hail

and at the bottom of the page it says "return for help" and that omen rings out like an echo 

of a blood curdling yell as we reach out into the abyss of that pale piss horse, over and over again searching for the definition of what "help" actually is

Smells Like Teen Spirit rises on the charts like our hearts needed it, the Soviet Union collapses in the dark, fractured homes sit, Rodney King gets beaten to a pulp, surveillance 

like unmarked cars set out into orbit

Whitney sings the star spangled banner like she's hope personified on a pulpit

Silence of the Lambs finds its home in the subconscious of a moment

Magic Johnson describes positivity in the form of HIV and he owns it

Freddie Mercury, Miles Davis, and Dr Seuss die

an undeserved optimism raises its eyes to the light

It’s 1991 but its 17 minutes to midnight

A hornets’ nest falls from the ceiling of a bathroom in Beijing, a rat scurries to protect its young its claws covered in artificial slum, a whale's belly shows up on the tarmac in Philly, an angel falls off its bar stool in the form of a crack rock on hill street

a sickness sits on the tail of a monkey's last meal, money changes fields of vision, surprise loses feeling in its hands

Floyd gets killed over and over again, as the repost button confesses, sins become viral systematic, oppressive

time and pigs learn how to fly and festive, festers

something beneath the surface celebrates the emptiness

impressions get impressionists high and love becomes malignant AND THEN benign

the automatic endless scroll begins at the same time, as the white distancing

black summer pairs with locusts and hurricanes like a magnum opus

The Great Barrier Reef gets its asshole bleached for the third time

gold colored glasses make roses disappear, elastic fascists lie about their height, their fear

the veil takes diet pills and grows thin, synchronicity and singularity have children called Nepotism, Narcissa, Pandema and Bloom

Bill Withers, Little Richard, Kenny Rogers Die

The company keeps us drugs, keeps us company, for 93 million dollars a night

It’s 2020 but its a 100 seconds to midnight

Years pass like a tiger chasing a bull ant, a crow feather becomes a sword hand

dirt under the fingernails the sign of a blessing, and we watch 

as the greatest minds write curses about us in the sand, our loved ones

begin changing, anger replacing, disintegrating like pixels on a plane tree, our genetics squeezed out on the beach

a salamander changes colors with the children watching, identities in unmarked coffins

genitals coughing, nothing defending sacred endings, we were just beginning to finally make it

irony gets second place, a gold medal awarded to Artificial Enforcers, naked numbers sucking a tit dry

I feed my grandfather water off a sponge and hold his hand while he crosses, cross-less 

and dies  

a black hole puts out a relationship column in a news reel giving hope eaters hunting advice

I against I against I against I against I

the existential dread is lifting weights, just happy to be alive

the pity and the pain and the shame and the juice learn how to drive, in a passenger seat justice becomes justify

a bull snake waits in the tone def driveway for a mate 

that will never make it across the 6 lane highway

nobody knows what year it is

but it's right now

It's dark out

It's 89 seconds to midnight.

We were a real midnight’s midnight kinda guy 

RAFAEL VIGILANTICS is a musician of some renown, an author of a few books, a wild-animal whisperer, a model for Harley Davidson, and the creator and owner of The Whiskey Creek Zocalo.