our destination, tucked beneath a venue
where several versions of me used
to work the door, perched in an air of unavailability—
guest list politics and self-imposed pretension
served in four hour shifts, we
play the game ourselves
air kisses and ass-kissing
to segue our way inside, eleven something-or-other and
it's already swarming: there, stage left
to our right I spot
Mysterious D on the decks, a
role I never saw her play in San Francisco
introductions are made in as friendly an exchange
as shouting permits, within seconds Jared's
abandoned us, floating within the sea
of bodies: currents bouncing around us three
as I lead the ladies to the bar
all the while dodging
elbows, flashes of teeth
and sweat flinging from human
water-sprinklers, rhythmic
as the sun-bleached yellow one so
many moons and brain cells ago, back
in my parents' front
yard, a verdant green with crickets as a soundtrack
here there's
heads bobbling to the beat
of unnatural disasters


Audrey takes her Shirley Temple dirty,
Strawberry opts for something I can't hear as it's ordered
she's too soft-spoken, and I'm living
vicariously anyway: alcohol
among my catalog of loves lost
it's a bottled water on my tab, besides
I'm intoxicated already by the
frenetic energy around us
it's straight into its center I want to venture
and I do, colliding with other friends
Darren, Joe, Matthew
there at its core, a blaze of white light
sizzling inches overhead
projecting images as mashed up as these sounds
of digital piracy: Cher's refrain of "Do You Believe..." a
cheeky marriage to Snoop D-O-Double G
that goes into the Go Go's
"We Got The Beat"
without missing one, their pop anthem
Powerbooked atop Soulja Boy
this bastardization endemic to The Culture of Now
where who said what and
the claim that's taken to any-
thing, thought, idea is tentative
all I know to believe as truth
is what feels right, right
here in this smorgasbord of race, gender,
and music, the universal language
that's evolving: I close my eyes and breathe it in
greedy gulps, fill my lungs with the scent
of what tomorrow will tell us today is named
on the backs of my lids I can almost see it
but it's a stretch just beyond
my range of vision, a realization that's shot
in two streams when I exhale, double-barreled
through my nose that follows this
pantomime of body, a fleeting discourse
in the collective vernacular
around me, eyes open to see
Adrian's replaced D as spokesperson
for these thousands of fingertips: so
my reach exceeds my grasp? So what?
none of us can hold on anyway
there's a smear of Pepto Bismol pink-
like tracers, so I reach out, grab
Audrey by the elbow, steady
her wobble and laugh
at the magnitude of this
decisive moment
when everything and nothing mean everything
there, where we burn burn burn
the dancefloor
down