A Night Portrait
This wasn't the way the night was suppose to lay down and be quiet. It was loud and reckless, and the rum ran down the street gutters like blood wet rain water. The shrieks of dogs cut into music stuffed ears. It's like a rat climbing a pipe sliding down screeching it's claws all the way like school chalkboard howling out equations that go unused. Nobody on this street uses those. If you can't count it on your hand, you don't need that many. Do without and learn to appreciate it. We are appreciating the night like this. Get ready for it. It's coming after the sun gets tucked under the sky's eyelid and opens the other eye wide letting the moon fly out. Money liquifies liquor bottles and smoke curls in pool hall love affairs, and you know the woman with the fake blond hair claims her victim from across the way. You know what's up. You've seen this game hundreds of night times past. He always takes the bait. You did it in your younger days. Now you are just here, at the end of the bar, wanting to be left alone to your beer while the blues band brings you back into a memory of a night decades ago. Where you cried when you lost the game you were playing, when you were actually playing seriously.