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lots of smoke tonight
by Gabriel RicardThings only got worse when six crates
of a Tuesday vintage champagne fell off a truck
that was trying to get out of town in a hurry.
The driver had some weird superstition.
He jabbered on about werewolves who were too stupid to know
the difference between full moon unrest
and a sadistic August afternoon
where everyone tried to build a Vegas carnival
along the vintage neighborhood streets.
Either that or he just owed a drag queen
on Habersham fifty bucks for a life-saving operation.
No one asked.
No one turned good fortune away at the door.
Panic in the streets had turned to celebration
some hours earlier for no particular reason. There’s a lot of strange medication
in the water supply. People either feel better than they have in years,
or they abandon their homes and mistake wet cement for sand
when trying to build a new castle for the sky.
Starlets over twenty-five were grabbing Bowery Boy descendents
and bottles of Wild Turkey for a meeting of the minds that went down
in either the cars no one wanted to drive anymore
or in the bushes of the less-appreciated homes.
Old men danced around fire hydrants
that bled like a 60’s professional wrestler.
Fourteen people died from the sheer anticipation
of one gunfight after another.
That makes sense since there wasn’t a bullet for miles.
It was a lot like the way eight p.m. ushered in
the sound and smoke of a train that had taken a family reunion
to California and had never come back.
No one asked.
No one turned down the music.
It swept up and then forward from some basement
moonlighting as an unlicensed wellness clinic.
No one wondered just what in the hell was going on.
The black market was dealing strictly in metaphors.
Fireworks remained spectacular in spite of only going
about half as far as they were paid to go.
Black-magic weddings and Mexican stand-off divorces
ran neck and forehead until people finally started to sober up
sixteen years later.
And the band played on.
They didn’t have instruments, arms or eyes,
but a local madman blessed their hearts for trying anyway.
04/01/2011 Author's Note: The "Tuesday vintage champagne" line comes from a joke from "The Bob Newhart Show."
Posted on 04/01/2011
Copyright © 2024 Gabriel Ricard
| Member Comments on this Poem |
| Posted by Alison McKenzie on 04/01/11 at 01:58 PM "Fourteen people died from the sheer anticipation"....my favorite line of yours, maybe, ever! |
| Posted by Julie Adams on 04/01/11 at 09:08 PM Best opening and closing I have read in a good while! Love stanza five too...how you offer so much to chew in each poem. Thank you, peace, jewels |
| Posted by Charlie Morgan on 04/01/11 at 11:01 PM ...as jewels says, still chewing ... i always hold on when i read you...cause there's a ride when you write, a delightful more happens than war and peace. |
| Posted by Philip F De Pinto on 04/10/11 at 01:18 PM I am an old man, ( there is no denying it ) and so you can count me among the aged dancing round the fire hydrant and the reason we old geezers are dancing and spinning round is owing to this poem. To read is to become a spoke to the whirling dervish which is this ode. |
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