9.16
(6 votes)
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note: a bit of questionable language.
post-gig, queen street. the bars just closed.
the streets are flooded with glossy women.
they’re all yelping into cel phones.
they teeter on the arms of muscly thick-necked men
who call them “baby”, as in, “baby, you all right?”
or “baby, let me take that for you.”
or, “baby, come here.”
i steer my bike precariously along the sidewalk
through the crowd of men and babies,
watching the women’s painted faces slacken,
watching the wobbly white heels.
watching them lean out of taxis and vomit into their streaked hair,
into sewer drains.
cheeks like coffee filters: thin, white.
they pull urgently at cigarettes. so many tiny gasps.
and look, i’m down here, too.
we dress up for this, i guess:
for the outrageous cover charge,
for the ass-grab and the dirty look,
for the bathroom stall door slamming shut behind us,
for the taxi,
for the babies.
we dress up to undress, to strip down, to reduce.
call it a night if we crawl back to sniveling infancy,
mascara carving roads to nowhere down our faces.
pantyhose ripped from toppling over onto a beer bottle, the blood unnoticed.
oh smoky streetlamp cloud, keep us warm.
call it a night if the thud of the bass creeps through the lamppost,
into all those knobbly bits of your spine.
when all you can do is sit, and wonder where the fuck jimmy went,
and wait for the next cab.
------
ark
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Ontario Autumn 1999
