One Night Only

One Night Only

Consider a beaten hovel holed in some faraway city
the dark hours of some exhausted workday midnight,
as dulling ice cakes and crystallizes over
splattered paints washing the old brick walls.

Once sparkling, now wishing of a countless final chance
desperate for the half-loving cares of some orderly
old or young, just the tepid acolyte with the same
dreams of proper fat lights, red shingles, 3-legged stools.

For this is home to old music. Long since
the cramped days of overcrowded dances. Thinking of
the many lovers who turned disappeared. Now only a
lost passerby on her way to some hip young club.

This particular night sounds just as yesterday’s.
A choice step into it's broken space comes
with a sorrowed crunch and crack of cockroach remains,
dangerous broken beer glasses shattered near.

But tonight is different. Torn Leaflets line the sick floor
that proclaim tonight is that "One Night!” And soon: music that
once led to dark, beautiful combinations of coarse melodies
which only pure souls dared avert a choice eye or ear.

Tonight. Only tonight an old couple will brave husked colds, the
howling of this rabid winter night. One old trumpet in both
frozen right hands, remembering days they once loudly loved.
Dirty music heard even from the dusty stall behind the bar.