Esta Noche

It’s Friday…and it’s slightly past the middle of the day and I can barely keep my eyes open. Feeling a bit low-energy. I’m on my second 12-oz of cold water to try to shake me awake. It’s not working. Instead, it just makes me want to pee often. I’m grumbly and moody. I ate a healthy veggie chili with a spicy kick that I made last night. It was yummy. But I’m feeling high-strung and upset today. I reached out to a friend and we kvetched about writing and it made me laugh at that moment. But now I’m back with chin in hand wanting to connect with my sci-fi novel. The one that’s not working. I’m frustrated. So I work on other things but the other projects don’t leave me satisfied. Instead, it heightens my frustration. Ergh!
Anyway, I wrote the following passage on the train home after Heart’s concert on Wednesday. It’s a pretty rough first draft….

Afterwards

In darkness love could be wrong

legs cross away, we do no speak clearly

bottles left uncovered, spilling over.

I am lost on First Avenue at midnight

bags lean against my thigh

she leaves me, reading a book.

My music consists of guitar players,

quiet vocals singing my lost poetry

We don’t speak, we squeeze into tight

subway spaces reminded that we loved

each other once. My watch has stopped,

your time is wrong and neither figure

on being right for a change. Wait,

while I write complicated prose

on my back teeth, past Cypress Avenue

at half past midnight and limp away

on blistered knees and bleeding feet.

Open my eyes and you have left me

again. Black kohl smudge the page

from stained fingertips. Inverted

phrases say nothing and tease me

that I was once a poet who wore

a black trench on a humid October

night and the rains have kept away.

You love me, especially at night

alone, keeping company with memories.

Ignite the corrections and a foot stamps

against the train floor. Pack a layer

of the past, the mewling cat demands

to be fed as Ann Wilson sings my path

home when uncovered bottles tip over.

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