The lizards hidden behind the palace walls
are the few rain drops,
leaving the storm to its downpour-ways outside,
penetrating nooks and shimmying through unseen places
to fall or plummet,
to dive headlong from the black ceiling,
avoiding deadends in a maze of multi-colored stage lights.
What once was nestled twenty thousand feet above the downtown scene
in a brooding mother cloud of smog and chemicals
now drops as heavy as sin,
randomly on the misguided heads of a swaying crowd,
a room filled to capacity and wall-to-wall,
ancient bricks eternally smelling of a century's worth of cigarette smoke
chaperones the denizens.
Skinny jeans and thin shoes,
ear-rings and cocky tattoos and black wandering eyes,
they are sickly animals thirsty for the devil's rhythm
and bathing orgiestically together under what once were raindrops,
in basement-darkness we confess before the alter,
grimy and sweaty and too many faceless black t-shirts.
Electric bomp, bomp, bomp.
Electric twang as his fingers slap.
Electric crash.
He wears two hats on his skullish head and reminds me
that the moon is full of cheese - is disgusting,
a one hat salute without uncovering his sopping stringy hair.
Electric voice that rocks the house.
The Editor and I exchange what must be glances,
our lungs dying in the moments that pass,
sipping too many and back for more,
are the few rain drops,
leaving the storm to its downpour-ways outside,
penetrating nooks and shimmying through unseen places
to fall or plummet,
to dive headlong from the black ceiling,
avoiding deadends in a maze of multi-colored stage lights.
What once was nestled twenty thousand feet above the downtown scene
in a brooding mother cloud of smog and chemicals
now drops as heavy as sin,
randomly on the misguided heads of a swaying crowd,
a room filled to capacity and wall-to-wall,
ancient bricks eternally smelling of a century's worth of cigarette smoke
chaperones the denizens.
Skinny jeans and thin shoes,
ear-rings and cocky tattoos and black wandering eyes,
they are sickly animals thirsty for the devil's rhythm
and bathing orgiestically together under what once were raindrops,
in basement-darkness we confess before the alter,
grimy and sweaty and too many faceless black t-shirts.
Electric bomp, bomp, bomp.
Electric twang as his fingers slap.
Electric crash.
He wears two hats on his skullish head and reminds me
that the moon is full of cheese - is disgusting,
a one hat salute without uncovering his sopping stringy hair.
Electric voice that rocks the house.
The Editor and I exchange what must be glances,
our lungs dying in the moments that pass,
sipping too many and back for more,
more,
closer and closer
to distinguish the mad-hatter's clumsy head in a frame between his fingers,
holding his odd instrument, happy to oblige,
our night is short with rushed back-talk and conversation
that cannot linger,
plans made and promises broken,
the Tower eludes us,
That 1 Guy stands before us,
as Sunday falls apart in the downtown rebirth of chance encounter,
the dashing apart of water molecules too many to count on the heads of the damned.
11/2007
closer and closer
to distinguish the mad-hatter's clumsy head in a frame between his fingers,
holding his odd instrument, happy to oblige,
our night is short with rushed back-talk and conversation
that cannot linger,
plans made and promises broken,
the Tower eludes us,
That 1 Guy stands before us,
as Sunday falls apart in the downtown rebirth of chance encounter,
the dashing apart of water molecules too many to count on the heads of the damned.
11/2007
i thought this was going to be about the hurricane. at the renaissance festival.
ReplyDeleteThat would make a good poem though. Here's to tossing it around...
ReplyDeleteWas I there? You made it vivid again from when I was, if not.
ReplyDeleteThis time, you were there.
ReplyDelete