The fire marshal showed up around noon,
and it was obvious that he was looking for a good time.

His convictions didn’t have a prayer.

Neither did the other twenty thousand part-time musicians.
Or the three-wheel holy rollers who only just recently found out
that you can be depraved and remorseful at the same time.

I couldn’t see all of them, but I was staying at the hotel
across the street. It was a hell of a view, and I had
a pretty good idea of how bad
it was in there from the people who were still trying to get in.

It was a nicer hotel
than the one
I was staying in.

The parking garage next door was spitting out
the cars that tried to find parking on the top floor.
A minute couldn’t go by without something
flying through one of the windows and into the people
who had to contend themselves with drinking outside.

The wind was not against rising to forty miles per hour
or carrying away people at random.

As far as I knew
I was the only one staying at my hotel. I had been there
for two days waiting on a phone call. Rather, I think it was
a phone call. I woke up in that room with a piece of paper
in my hand promising I would hear more soon.

I didn’t know what it meant,
and I already had enough to worry about.

The TV didn’t work,
and The Gideon’s had apparently
come back for their Bible before I checked in.

The patterns in the walls were nothing special, and I didn’t like
the way that woman on the beach was looking at me.

Even if she was just a bad painting
she still knew what she was doing.

So, I watched the fifty-floor show
at the nicer hotel across the street.

I thought about joining them,
getting some answers on why I had never seen
so many people so happy to be fucking up, getting lost
and losing everything.

But I didn’t want to leave,
so I sat on the bed,
waited for that phone call
and wondered what all the fuss was about.

I came up with nine different theories.

01/30/2010

Posted on 01/30/2010
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