All Tonight's Adventures

All Tonight’s Adventures

All tonight’s adventures
haunt yesterday’s alleyways
restless escapades
in keeping it real and staying made.
Ups buffed and fading
pinball pops reset
click click another cigarette
another broken couch skin up
another beer spilt
on sweat slick dance floor
piss on the street corner
rock poster car ads torn
and waving for freedom
of a windswept grocery bag.
Clouds race across the bridge,
sunlight breaking breathless
snowstorms on river top
Imminent return to coffee shop hotspot,
warm toes, fill belly
past line of scrimmage,
and on to the next
secretive mission.

* * *

They’re tearing down Dixmont,
abandoned asylum unvisited.
Glass graveyard running out of shards
and you haven’t been there either.
Is the deer-head steel mill next,
-- or old Heppenstall?
History erased
--repeats,
all tonight’s adventures
can only go so far,
in the vacuum of the moment
present tense parsed to pieces,
Once Berkman pulled a caper here
then escaped to dance with Emma,
now underground rail-roots unearthed
four more years Revolution scramble.
Can you stop time?
Dirty guitar haze
chase dreams away
playing nights in shining ardor,
paradise radio pirates
stretching tin can antennas
over our secret city interstices.
Despite best efforts
--citysteps will remain
overgrown and moistly crumbling.

* * *

One takes off his glasses,
punks spin off without a rumble.
For a moment
something could have happened
but vulnerability trumps face to hands
and we all get high in turn.
Sirens blare off warehouse walls
13th hour and all
carrying when the K9 rolls.
She expects worst
I expect nothing
especially freaky Friday suspicions,
by the next block we learn
nothing wins again,
and we all get high in turn.

* * *

Repeat.

* * *

I’m sick of getting high
Never high enough after the first.
Sick of cycles
-- of unquenched recreation
desperate self-medication
the same painted sidewalks
worn raw with habit
grooved to quick-eyed footsteps
and ceaseless questing fingertips.
Sick of eating, my gods, eating.
No appetite for months now
mastication reduced to repetition
confetti and gravel scraping palate.
Slightly amused
-- mostly nauseous.
Hands quiver around the beat
and even sleeping
-- takes concentrated effort.
But what, really, is wrong?
Joe Melba says there is no sick
and falls ill the next.
I buy a bag out of sheer boredom.

* * *

How you doing, man?
You know, in the groove,
that apocalyptic rage glitter fuck all groove,
man.

* * *

Rolling high over slanty town,
stars out now
--past full moon fever,
hip to hype the horrors away
hop to grope next furious game,
-- anything to entertain.
Laser lights the city squares
rushed by forgotten
stadium-parking underpasses
bridges
Saturday-night revelers
reviling the next bar block walk
more bridges
--burned in urban
wasteful wonderland lust.

* * *

My god she says
rough beasts slouching
toward beds to behave,
can you believe
that’s all they do anymore?
Sitting stoned like ducks in a row
out of pluck, out of flight.
Just shot from all sides
another dreary night.
This beat makes me want
-- to kill myself.
Pause at corner to consider
imminent return.
Keep hoping
-- they’ll prove me wrong
----some day...

* * *

Reality, you are surely not what you used to be.

* * *

A street streaking higher
up the hill, no backward glances
Downtown reduced to wireframe edges
of stop and go commotion
-- commingling
traffic lights reenact window display
scenes refracting
into endless unrecountable
telephone romances.
Every lit window a twinkle
-- in the city’s eye,
a page in history’s datebook replied
or denied.
--Tossed on the fire.
Lives careening goalless
into garage parks of spent time.
No gods to guide,
the record spins out of control.
Pedestrians pinball past
flashing crosswalk drains,
periodic wandering
-- repeats,
all tonight’s adventures
played out in critical multitude,
till each unmarked trajectory
--plots totality,
appetite versus apparition.
And on with the mission.

* * *

We had the experience
but missed the meaning,
and approach to the meaning
restores the experience
in a lower quality format,
dreamt in fast forward,
the beat expanding
-- in pothole pockets of excite.
Could spend the rest
-- in perpetual rewrite.
Bye bye life,
all that’s left is last century’s jazz riffs
and literati dramas of not being forgotten.

* * *

Bye bye life
I think we’re gonna win
lit up screaming
safety break halftime meeting.
Had the meeting, missed the experience
visceral transference of glory deferred,
turnaround passion players
crush opposing spirits vicarious.
All’s fair on all fours.
Everyday a celebration;
another victory for taste
another holiday in the streets
passers-by pumping pride
-- in team colored tears
the city in love with itself
for a moment
spontaneous singing almost erupts,
but we all get high in turn
on winning, on life,
on moments of Sunday sunbeams
breaking bread in bar booths
burning bushes between
this destination
-- and the next
fading contrails mark
measures to the sunset,
rose-petaled sonic angels
booming high notes over Bloomfield
where soon the stars
will roll out again.

* * *

This time in song.

* * *

One takes off his glasses
worlds spinning off with control,
laughs over the whole spectacle
We rule, okay?
Behind another distant window
some fresh young stranger
chooses his own
--novel
rock and roll orbit novella,
knowing there’s nothing
but get up and stay higher,
-- rewrite the game entire,
till heroes are gone
constellations ransacked prior
and on to the next
adventure conspired,
another big idea to get us free yet.
Last rhyme saved for stitches
sew up laughter for another today,
-- bitches.