After Midnight

The other day in Poetry Writing, we were given a prompt called: After Midnight. We wrote for 12 minutes, and I came up with an okay poem. I came home later and rewrote it and absolutely love it, I still have some editing to do.  But I am turning it into a poetry competition for KSU.

After Midnight

After midnight, laughter no fights
these days the party begins now
while children sleep, and parents weep
about our abused futures,
we celebrate the broken life
we toast to victory and angst
and raise our glasses to fate.

Our sleepless eyes, stricken

with insomnia, see through the blurry

silhouettes of street lights and

our own sexual sensations.
We are but puppets of the world
and our parents are pulling the strings. But
after midnight it’s our life to do as we please.
As the night’s delicate darkness dwells

neon lights illuminate ourselves

and our human nature.

The cigarette butts lie littered

on the ground next to the walls

caked in pornography and graffiti

saying ‘fuck the police’ and ‘we are the revolution.’

This is our vocabulary and these
are our pictures of tomorrow’s past

this is who we are,
what we’ve always been
and tomorrow we’ll be the image
of our parents best wishes again
but until then, for the night,
 let the party begin
let us drag on these cigarettes
like hipsters with their no-name brands
and join an ironic rebellion
against society and what our parents want us to be.
Let’s forget our sorrows
until the morrow
and let our dreams never end
let's kiss the lips

of our drunken  friends

and intoxicate ourselves with infatuation

until beauty never ceases.

And lets pray to the gods of our
own wretched souls
and fall in love with the goddesses
of our human hearts
because after midnight we slip out of
our meat suits and into our true identities:

lovers of the night.