It’s okay if the church choir songs I can hear
from that old building don’t mean a thing.

I’ll be fine,
if all of them are proven liars and career drug dealers.

What I like is that the music is coming from that building.
The top floor kept rational gravity at arm’s length.
It’s been empty for years though,
and I stopped touring my memories of it when the elevator
finally stopped working.

When I got tired of all those “Bum a ride?” signs
telling me what my nights are like these days.

Hey, I don’t mind when my anxiety is running so high
that I take too many pills,
add chlorine to Betty’s aunt’s martinis,
and head out to make new friends in the Martian landscape
parts of a city that’s still strange,
unhealthy, and dangerous.

You can hope the lightning plays it up,
sends the power lines down to reach out
towards me for a trust exercise,
but don’t expect me to turn traitor on my lopsided blessings.

I just wish I didn’t have to stand alone
against the graveyard shift so much.

Some people went out, fell in love at 10:30,
and got kids that are more expensive
than prostitutes who know which abandoned train
has all that money no one’s ever found.

Others got sick of the toll required to smile when I come over.

Forgiving them is easy.
Goodnight, lights out, bless you for not screaming
when you tripped over your own feet in the sudden dark.

They didn’t wait around for the band to play them off.
Improvisation for deportation,
scratches you can cover up with a dark shirt,
and red wine are all beautiful things.

But I still like a lot of different kinds of music,
and I can at least still pass by the building
where all those great minds
chose to throw their lives away over a ten year period.

And then turned the other cheek
when they heard about fresh air.

03/06/2013

Posted on 03/07/2013
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