Celebrating my 64th
Birthday in the Dead Zone
The Boardroom bass
beat
stuns eardrums a block away.
Flat screen TVs illuminate
a fenced courtyard.
Four young women stuffed
into black dresses smoke,
gossip at a cement picnic table.
The front door security guy
doesn’t bother checking my ID,
looks at wrinkles, greying hair,
waves me inside.
A wall of jolting music assaults,
insults the senses.
Twenty-something men line
the bar; trolling females
cluster optimistically
around bistro counters.
Red lights pulse within
a glass mezzanine where
the DJ spins disc after disc
of seething cacophony,
no discernible lyrics.
It’s 93
degrees,
night of
Yom Kippur,
drinks
and indiscretions abound,
not a
person atoning.
line: they like to test us
Survivalist
It’s
three a.m.,
hours
since the crash
of
pictures torn from wall,
something
slammed,
cursing,
screams,
then a
thrown bottle.
I’d go
down to plead,
but it’s
never wise
to get
that close
while
Irish whiskey’s
still
flowing,
dope pipe
and cannabis
next to a
tangle of cables,
black
game controllers.
Soon
you’ll be nodding off,
releasing
my clenched heart,
allowing
the dogs and me
to
breathe easy, offer thanks
behind
our locked door.
Sleep
comes to erase
another
night in the war zone,
arms me
to survive
like a
guardian angel.
Cognitive Dissonance
He reads the restraining order,
thinks, “She must be
kidding.”
He shoots up testosterone,
steroids, knocks back
a couple cans of Red Bull.
Angrily jumps
into his Hummer,
tracks her down.
Just before their driveway,
intercepts her moving car.
He honks, watches as she
locks the doors,
screams into a cell phone.
When six cops in
two police cars arrive,
he impatiently tells them
“This is just a
mistake;
she’s confused.
I’ll tell her to
explain,
clear it all up.”
He is still shoving
and yelling
as officers apply Tasers,
then handcuffs,
wrestle his thrashing,
muscle-bound body
onto to the ground.
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