this is about the party last week

I saw a woman get off the bus in Allentown wearing a black cocktail dress and high heels
that kept getting stuck in the concrete and on her head
she had the sort of hair you find in a peroxide bottle
and I am almost positive she was drunk and it was 11 am and she was wearing sunglasses.

I am the kind of guy who answers the phone on the first ring
sixty percent of the time.

I’ve got two sets of headphones
but they’re the little kind that you stick in your ear
and sometimes forget about.

and we all had fun at the party last week
where everyone went home sick
where everyone got laid
where we sat in the back under stars and plotted
a novel a coup a military one with violence and blood and also the kind that is swift and painless and seems to occur overnight we drank lemonade with all sorts of things in it and saw for miles

I am writing this on a bus and in a room in my parents house and all the time, especially when I sleep.

and because most of the time I have time for what is in front of me and slightly off in the distance
at least as far as my glasses let me see and beyond that I think well,

I think of that party last week
and how we all stood there in our ties and finery
and how I wouldn’t ordinarily have a chance to use finery in a sentence
and turned all the lights on and off and woke things up and put things to bed
all over ourselves and the neighborhood and how these things start somewhere
and could literally go everywhere if you tipped it just right


if we all drank moonshine and played guitars with broken fingers it could sound okay
we would see for miles and fill garbage pails with cigarette butts
and turn the blacktops into beaches
and bury each other.