HOUSE OF LIGHTS (ca. 1988)

How cold the House of Lights is by the entrance ramp,
all that beveled glass in the empty interior darkened.
And they have tried to sell their surplus light outside,
so much surplus light they'll give you blinds for it,
those wooden slats and plastic razor clamshells
ungirdled from their drawstrings. Designer lamps crane
above invisible readers: in the land of the not-living,
a family dog teeths a slipper from Dad's foot.

Dust collects on this light that has no buyers,
light that would illuminate a wound or tooth
abandoned to the ruin of the mouth,
light that would brighten the studio, surprise the prowler,
spills from the multi-branched candelabra.
Prospects keep driving up the exit to the sea.
No one wants to buy this light, even if it's cheap.

Chinese lamps, for newlyweds or bookish students,
drop into rustling paper circumferences.
Dimmer switches turn off nothing. Copper forks
that would have connected them to households
green before they find the jacks that are their home.
Track-lights cannot illuminate the artwork
whose tiny flaws in execution dimness softens
in the home of the executive. No one will come

to the House of Lights. With potential buyers gone,
sundry cords and their plugs drop back in boxes
like serpents into pits. And were these lamps eyes,
they would dim with vacancy, alone in cardboard sleeves.
Each filament that a frosty cataract of glass has curbed
trembles as again another driver disregards it.