I revisit that night and I don't know why I don't know why it took so long for you to get there for one thing I parked Which took some time But I found a spot I won't be towed And I walked to the hotel entrance and waited far too long I took out a cigarette And I bet I smoked the whole thing.
You never showed up which was strange. Did I start to smoke another? I thought that I was being polite waiting on the curbside Eventually R. and his girlfriend showed up Super late But polite which was no longer something to expect from anyone anymore I found
They collected me and we went up to the Penthouse And there you were Did you race like a daemon breaking those presumptuous, Certainly useless Laws pertaining to Physics just to get up Fairfax Avenue? You ran to get to a party that you were only invited to because of me? Without me. This is not normal is it?
Your excuse upon my arrival was ******. Idiotic. I walked away.
On the balcony I stood with you and R. again We had avoided one another throughout the night yet always collided back like opposing atoms. Was that my doing? I really think that that one was your trick.
One of you had a joint And I thought to myself O ******* Thank God It went around once maybe twice And then became a two-step Without me (Again!) Back and forth between you two.
I was standing there quietly waiting like it was a game of jump rope Watching for the moment when the rope would let me in My turn would come up eventually cuz I'm standing right here.
I think one of you R. probably Handed me the joint now dead A stiff speck of rolling paper stuck between ******* And the two of you turned and walked away from me Without a care Brothers-in-arms
Well this isn't that sort of party. Boots on the ground. Blood in the sand. Pack on your back. Gun raised. The stench of iron and salty offal. Heroes in The Battle of Normandy. I am not an Axis soldier and i know that you are not Allies
This Chateau is modeled after one in the Loire so the legend has it. And this is a totally different thing altogether.
Wasn't your father, a fireman and you, his firestarter? Didn't you watch him put out your flames on the local tv news while you lay on the carpet chin in hands, full color?
Did I follow you both back inside? I think that I didn't I hope that I didn't How do you follow that? I know that I walked to the balcony's edge And settled into watching the rings to my right The smoke rings from the cigarette of the Marlboro Man perching above Sunset Blvd. what have I done? how has it come to this so fast?
I may have joined in Blowing rings from up above I made O's very well in those days One after another One inside another The billboard too We're strange amigos we Our rings float away unfurling into thinner mists While the white and red lights of cars down below us Rush into the sparkling night air East West Somewhere other than here My circles disappear above my head His circles too.
Did he seem to you like a happy cowboy? Rugged and determined Those unsentimental eyes Narrowing fearlessly at a blank manifest destiny O O O O It's endless but I can keep up.
Looking at him from were I stand I know that I will need some of what he's got to get through this situation. I thought that I had it on me. I thought that I had packed it. But somehow it's taken its leave or Gone Missing.
He's not even real This eminence to my right Just wood and paper and a mechanism making steam look like a plume of carcinogens O O O O Yet I look at him a bit jealously regardless Funny to feel that way about a billboard Maybe cuz he's kind of a man Maybe it's his hat But it's true nevertheless His rough hew cardboard evokes
the self determination at all costs here above Sunset.
I will leave this penthouse with its sick yellowy light Dash into the elevator again Make my escape Light another and Blow those rings. Messaging Mayday Signaling my location Above ground Terra Firma Not underwater in depths that cannot support life R.'s been dead now almost twenty years By his own hand.
Tomorrow I will try again I hinted to myself barely believing I still have my lighter and what cigarettes are left in the pack.