-I don't have a lot of sympathy
for the people who are too drunk
to stop dancing. The ones who are just insane
are a different story altogether.

-God knows why I'd come here
any old night of the young week
let alone Friday. This is the absolute worst
of the underground cartoon cavalcade, and there's thousands of rooms
just like this one to have to look through.

-At best I'll be around thirty before I'm actually ready
to face who I'm looking for.

and at worst, i'll be wading through the same cesspools
with the rest of the late-night,
bleach-burned,
lounge-singer gestapo
until i catch their disease,
and kill myself as remedy.

but i suppose i'm selling the sin a little short,
and perhaps the merits of being this demented
might warrant more of tonight's masochism
than i have been so far able to admit.

-Because it's the entertainment district
you gotta watch out for. Those lounge acts are known
to carry guns, assume every woman is a whore
and wave handfuls of guns around whenever
a cell phone starts to ring.

-The slot machines take cash, wedding rings
and whichever arm you can learn to live without.

-It's definitely not a good idea to be broke
if you're in love or have dangerous people looking for you.

-Around here you write that story after they send you
to the morgue in a new suit.

which is not to say that the new outfit
was gonna cost anyone half as much
as the things they'd have bought for themselves
with cash snatched from your pockets
before your body hit the floor on a good night,
or any fraction of the royalty checks
they'll be banking on that story of yours.

but legends don't come cheap,
and around here,
they come with asterisks even then.

-They come with cups of coffee,
bad knees and stories about meeting Dean Martin
when he came of entertainment age
during the greatest heartbeats of Atlantic City's
early days of glamour and corruption.

-I've been in these tunnels and rooms for years,
and I've carried a sinking feeling for just as long
that no one here has ever met anyone of substance.

-Unless you count acid flashbacks
and dreams that wake you up with more adrenaline
than you can take.

-I've got all that going for me,
and I'm pretty sure loved ones are starting to notice
when I magically come back from the dead six days
after I left with good intentions.

but although damnation ain't exactly in short supply,
giving a damn ain't hardly the same as "noticing."
and that's not even to mention the facts
that iron-clad alibis
have never once matched steel-toed boots
impression for impression,

or that our spines curve for a reason.

10/12/2010

Author's Note: My stanzas are indicated with a "-". Vince Blake is without question one of the best poets I know of. Working with him was an honor, and as it turns out he was the one who wrote all the really good lines. I think he's just getting confused in his old age.

Posted on 10/12/2010
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