A Vegas haze,
flown over
snow flurries
in the desert,

like frogs falling
or locusts come calling.
Casinos full of cowboys
and their trophy toys

casting dice
and fortunes away
for glamour,
or somebody'’s sake.

A landing trip
begins on a rainy strip
where purity is sold
to fools for their gold,

and taxi men, forty-three,
date girls, eighteen –
or so they say or
so or so they stutter.

The country collides
to make technology strides
while waiting in line
for sculptures to sign

glossy posters –
their perfect surfaces
smooth over our eyes
layer by layer.

We wait where admission
is an economic decision,
and earpieces serve a function
at a red-velvet junction

to take us downstairs,
where clocks spin wisely,
and the hours freely flow
but not through our hands.

And it all depends
where your night ends
when you’re in it for panache,
when friends equate to cash,

and the heads ask for coke,
and the freaks for speed,
and the men for women,
and the women for drinks.

You can visit Venice
or stroll Paris;
see N.Y.C.
and still not be

a mile from your bed,
or beds,
or floor,
as the case may be.

Spinning sounds and splashing lights,
stinging fish and pirate fights,
memories made in man-made seas
that coalesce and start to bleed

into three never-ending, winsome days,
caught unaware, in a Vegas haze.

01/13/2005

Author's Note: Just got back from my first trip to Vegas last weekend. We did so many things over the three days that it was impossible to reconstruct the trip in our heads when we were done. This is just my attempt to throw those thoughts and images together...

Posted on 01/13/2005
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