It's all so cliche, it's all so overdone

2:39 a.m.

The artist laments again.
An affected line has worked it's way
into the paragraph.
It is not his own.

2:43 a.m.

The blinds are bent apart,
snaking across the window.
He imagines the stopped traffic,
the passers-by;
He fears they can peek in and observe
the open-heart surgery.

2:53 a.m.

The artist laments again.
He should really call her, but he doesn't.
She is asleep and each time he picks up
the phone he imagines someone else in her bed.
He can only put it back down.

2:57 a.m.

The artist laments again
The picture she gave him was taken
on a Thursday and it is only
the two of them.
The picture is bright and smiling
and full of hurtful lies.

3:01 a.m.

The surgeons, fatigued,
have been working far too long.
Keeping the beat going
like a drawn out encore
when we all just want to go home.

3:10 a.m.

The artist laments again.
What seemed a brilliant start
did not even finish,
but instead poured out in so many
incoherent directions;
a silk sheet to a frayed rag.

3:12 a.m.

The artist erases
He was not sure anymore
what mattered and what did not.
or what
or whom
he was even writing about.

3:13 a.m.

The surgeons have left the ventricles,
the valves.
These noble cardiologists;
clearly having slept through
pulmonology,
are taking a cigarette break
in the lungs.