Night OutI have seen you in the palms of my hands
late nights in the bar
just before the lights
are about to be turned on. You are powerful horses
by then, not the wrinkled sacks of thin, mewing
spirit,
that lay about the bar early in the day
waiting for minds and bellies.
You are the ones who slapped Anna on the back,
told her to drink up
that it didn’t matter anyway.
You poured Jessie another Coors, and another one
and another.
Your fingers were tight around hers
because she gave herself to you.
Your voice screamed out from somewhere in the
darkness
another shot, anything to celebrate this deadly
thing called living. And Joe John called out to bring
another round, to have another smoke, to dance dance it good
because tomorrow night is another year—
in your voice.
I have heard you in my ownself.
And have seen you in my own past vision.
Your hearts float out in cigarette
smoke, and your teeth are broken and scattered in my hands.
It doesn’t end
For you are multiplied by drinkers, by tables, by jukeboxes
by bars.
You fight to get out of the sharpest valleys cut down into
the history of living bone.
And you fight to get in.
You are the circle of lost ones
our relatives.
You have paid the cover charge thousands of times over
with your lives
and now you are afraid
you can never get out.