EXCITING NIGHT

Exciting Night


Exciting TV drama
and the sizzle of steaks
breaks
the monotony of having a
like in a roof that
just drips
as long there's a floor
and a old carpet to ruin
with a seeping, creeping rain.

On the set
it's a show about
people
at work who wave their arms
and raise their
voices in the interests
of what the right thing to do is,
so much yelling in
the face

of your co-workers,
so much insubordination
because there
is so much principle at stake
as to whether to charge the credit card number
for the guaranteed no show.
The desk clerk berates his manager
while the bell man looks on
while straightens
his lapels and
looks vaguely haunted
in the awful light of
valet parking...

"...Damn it, Dan, we held the room ALL FREAKING NIGHT
and they didn't show
even with two
telephone confirmations.
I coulda sold that room
a hundred times over
if I could have.
We gotta charge 'em,
c'mon,
we gotta pay for the night maid..."

The music rises while the three of them freeze in place
while they squint
and rotate their jaw lines,
and then the commercial hits
the screen, and then
I turn off the sound,
fixating on the drip,
the growing stain
in the rug, I grit my teeth
and look at you in the other room
listening to
all five volumes of
live Johnny Winter
on head phones,
I am trapped in a house
where only little things
having no
sane description
effect the course of the night, the mood it takes
even as the storm rages harder and there is
the sound of continuous applause
through out the house, down the hall ways,
up the stairs and echoing against
the tile
and grouts, bouncing off the mirror I stood in front of this morning
licking a lip with a tongue that
needed to taste something that
was lost in the stubble of
a beard turning gray completely
only after the new century
has wrapped its arms
around the house
and its storyline and made sure
everyone knows
that where they sleep
is a roof closer to the one
we die under

In however much time it takes,
assuming we're in doors, in bed, after sex with
a woman
you 'vet loved since
before the beginning of memory,
assuming a life that deserves applause
like the way the rain sounds now,
crisp and demanding and rattling the
chains of heaven's
rusty gate

A gun goes off after the commercial
and I see
the clerk, manager and the bellman
still standing behind the front desk
while a guest they'd been ignoring
holds a smoking gun on them,
screaming words to the effect that his continental breakfast
gave him the squirts bad,
a situation not helped
by hotel plumbing
that's old and
clogged with the evidence of strangers passing through town
on their way to better shows,

you are singing
to Johnny Winter
real fine
"...It's my
own fault, baby
treat me the way
the way
you
wanna
do..."

You slide down the seat,
you shirt runs up
your waist,
you rib cage
rises and falls
with the fluid rush of Winter's blues guitar,

I dream of smoking
after we make love,
I dream of you
dreaming of me
in all the rooms
where there are ceiling leaks
on a night that
hasn't enough
bowls or pans
to catch every drop.