The sideshow brings in
a lot of sincere, forlorn business
on a Saturday night. Sundown and the tourists are great enough
in numbers for a revolution that will be finished by late-August.

They’ll be long gone. The bearded pregnant teen
and Cocaine Cottonmouth will be mopping the floors as always.

You’ll find them saving library books from those cowboys
who shoot out the windows
of adult bookstores and drink so much
they can’t tell the difference between hockey or a stage version
of The Godfather.

When the kids head back to the great, sprawling cities of New York
and Little Rock an old-timer is going to put on his best jacket,
buy smokes with quarters and walk slowly through
the sonic juggernaut of the hour en-route to his thirtieth birthday party.

Then there’s the vicious rumor that always seems
to circulate this time of year. The long weekend ends in disaster,
nobody wants to get those cars off the only bridge that leads out of town
and some loser wakes up in the hospital with all these wild stories
about young love being alive and well.

Not just the invention of some writers
who remember everything from their childhood summers
but can’t hold on to a single phone number after they grow up.

Those artists are a sorry bunch of bastards
posing as unappreciated actors.
Most of them get by working for one of the twenty-four
competing haunted city bus tours.

There’s a whole mess of bloodshed
competing for that particular dollar.

It’s a better use of time for any one of them
than realizing they probably don’t know
the first thing about love.

Thinking about that kind of thing when it’s quiet enough
to hear the sirens drive around in circles is fine.
But one wants to get a grip on everything
when they’re standing in the middle of a party
that has drinks enough for Times Square circa 2078.

Just nothing in the way of a dedicated performer
who has endured enough personal tragedy
to reach out and get all that universal brotherhood, worldwide charity
rolling along like it should have back in the 80’s.

The kind where everyone else goes home,
fixes a last call that kicks like a church bell
and remarks to the nurse who left their side a long time ago
that at the very least they know how to keep their complaints
and anxieties to themselves.

02/24/2011

Author's Note: well i like it anyway.

Posted on 02/24/2011
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