Fright and Flight

I dropped my mirror at a party last night
and everyone turned to look.
No, I did not drop the china, or stumble into shot glasses.
When they look they'll see
themselves.

They will see their blood-shot eyes
shooting across the floor,
dilated pupils attracted by the clumsy noise
of a shatter inside the kitchen door.
Look to see the broken pieces that become us.

We sway our shoulders to sounds like grinding
and the strangers' hands behind us directs our hips.
We do not think,
because we need this time
to succumb to numbness-- momentary bliss.

This is who we are for the night,            maybe.
We are the Red Label shots that sting to swallow
and the powder that turns your stomach.
We are the fragrant smoke that burns your eyes
and the zombie-faced girls with our heads in Wal*mart bags.

Our scene is a funeral,
a cherry-orange cigarette burning down to the filter
to be flicked into a       six      foot       hole
and burn the petals of plastic flowers that are aesthetics.
We are the procession that trails from the sidewalks and vanishes
into a house with dark shadows in the window pane.  

There are stairs in the other room
that plummet to a deeper hell,
a basement that exists essentially for a pipe
being loaded and passed like exhaustion that strangles the sober.
And cool walls like earth for a young girl's back as a man       kisses her hard.

We become creatures,
crawling in the dark and hiding from the light.
Night vision sets in with the lights turned out
and rugs cover the square windows that the sun warrants
and again, sunrise means nothing.

My pores ask me
"What have you done?"
They spill my secretes as they seep
the smell of nicotine and the chemical drag
of cocaine and sweat glands hyperactive from the dance
of letting go and holding on,
to a girl that could become
a phantom in a mirror at a party at a place,
far from earth or heavenly embrace.
Lonely and wanting more
of that        serotonin   that blushes her cheeks.
We all dissipate to our holes when the altitude is gone
like rabbits on the road at night.
Our eyes glow moonstone in the headlights.

Fright and flight become us.