On the sixteenth floor
there’s a dress code
for the ongoing orgy,
but someone’s more than willing
to take a three hundred dollar hit
so no one has to go on the balcony to smoke.

I’m not ungrateful. It’s just that I’ve been waiting
over a year to be able to stand outside at a great height,
wonder if I know anyone in the airplanes passing overhead
and wait for snow to suffocate the larger of my minor insecurities.

This is the kind of weather people bring up six or seven times
in a thirty-minute conversation about plans for the future.

You laugh because
it’s a pain in the ass to light your cigarette.

I spent just a little over twelve months getting heatstroke
in November. Sweating three different calibers of bullets
at Creepy Cara’s House of Pain
because the air conditioning costs extra, and the girls love,
just love the way their black bridesmaid dresses stick to the skin.

To be frank I don’t think I belong
inside anyway. I’ve always had issues
with being funny around more than two naked people
at a time.

The women are certainly gorgeous. No argument there.
The fellas are without a doubt very polite. Goes without saying.

Maybe it’s just not worth writing about anymore.
The tattoos on those legs and lower backs
are looking awfully damn familiar.

I’m pretty sure the guy sleeping on his face in the bathroom
is the same one from the last time I was stuck
in this kind of waiting room weirdness.

The moans and breathless multitasking is old hat
to journalists who couldn’t afford to go to college.

Wouldn’t that be depressing? I’d like to think
I can have a good time and not go back home to watch
the footage so many times that one of the critical scenes
gets lost in an unexpected fire.

That’s when I have to use a little creative license,
and a death threat from my elementary school reunion committee
almost always winds up in my mailbox the next day.

I guess it could be anything. Might even be seasonal allergies
or something I read in a newspaper in my dreams.

I know this much though. I know I want to cross from this balcony
to the one right next to me and see what’s going on over there.

The music is certainly compelling enough,
and I haven’t heard laughter like that in a good while.

Maybe they’re digging the weather, too.

10/20/2010

Posted on 10/20/2010
Copyright © 2024 Gabriel Ricard