Stokey 2014

Stokey 2014 I am working the door At an all night bar Sometimes I think I have spent too much time alone. These long nights remind me of flowers and effigies. I drink too much. There’s a telephone by the bar. I watch people talk and see their lips move. I imagine what they are saying. Talking to lovers or parents. Making excuses, about their tenuous lives. They reciprocate and lie to each other. But what do I know I am only the doorman. It’s two in the morning…I light a cigarette and let the smoke billow out my nostrils. Like a bull I stand silently. Dressed in black I live and die in my own dark dreams. Nomenclature. A sign on the door washes me away. It’s not important except to the owner. “Open all night”. We never close. I am only here at nights. Christmas 2014. I am not a robot not a ghost. My shoes are muddy and my suit soiled. A number of patrons have tested me this evening. They always try to crack the code on holidays. I in turn crack their simple heads. Call it a dance. The morning light is starting to break. I hear the birds in the distance. I run a number through the floors. It comes back a flat zero. Tentative dogs bark in the morning fog. I can picture their breath on the wind. Frozen in time. Crumbling in the light of day. I walk away. Rufus always comes in at the end of my shift. He works nights; his happy hour begins at 7:00 AM. Iggy has been here all night. I walk him home. We don’t normally speak. At least not for the last three years. Not since his wife died. He’s a natural. He collapsed on a knee before she died and recited Shakespeare till dawn. I like Iggy. West of Phoenix… Crumbling beauty, desert cacti. I see the tracers at night. They blow across the sky like sunbeams on Mars. There is no place I would rather be. Heliograph reflections of 66 Cadillac’s streaming onto the mesa and then into the high sierras past the mountains and down into the fertile valleys of the seamless Californian landscape. I have never been happier. I sip the morning light as I walk home with Iggy. He is by my side. Loyal and distant. I talk about my childhood and cry. He nods and keeps on walking. Never missing a beat. There is nothing about salvia that I like. It smells like cat piss and old ladies. Iggy doesn't seem to mind. He is oblivious. I wish I were more like him. Once we get to his casa I say goodbye. He blinks and turns. Purple walls and watermelon trim. He is home today. I turn and walk east down 57th Street. I light up a Cuban cigar. The smoke billows around my head and blows it back west towards the desert where it belongs. I am burning their fields. A stokey on this Christmas the year of our Lord 2014.