Line 'Em Up

Line ‘Em Up, Next Round’s On Me

I was cold as hell, frozen in place with a racing heart,
keenly indifferent, and aching to be well.
I was a losing winner.
Or maybe a winning loser.

A monstrous little building ambushed me,
a bright spot in the night.
I staggered in,
looking for a way out.

Tastefully bland and inhabited by emptiness,
it inspired me with its obscurity.
Friendly strangers mixed with strange friends,
circling a square bar in soothing eeriness.

It was incredibly awesome
how the socially stagnant
blindly looked for anesthetized rapture,
each one alone in the crowd.

Poised between enlightened confusion and nervous sedation,
I grew smaller.
I heard the silence of my whispered screams,
smiled and nodded, joyfully crying
until I was actively dead.

The experience was simply deep.
Or deeply simple.
I might have twisted myself straight.
It’s possible I staggered out looking for a way in,
to a world already gone.

Line ‘em up, bartender, the next round’s on me.

Sandy Knauer
ã 2004