Let us go then, you and I,
as a dull yellow blur spreads across the midnight sky,
like nature's scream against the neon city light.
We can but scream back.
Take a tour through taverns and taprooms,
the staging area, where casino phone lights blink back and forth.
No please, ignore that haughty laughing man in the corner,
he is neither asleep nor awake.
Drinks at eleven, bed by one,
a pat on the back for a job well done,
then afternoon brunch with daughter and son --
he is not the subject of our story.
Rather, step outside into car horns and mist.
The air is hot, the vapors curl in the nostrils of a vagrant man
whose beady eyes and crystal lips twist rainbow smoke to haunted shapes.
"Someday the rain will come," he says,
"and over time will turn to sleet which over time will turn to hail
and as the mercury condenses your skin will finally feel the chill."
And he is right,
but not tonight.
We wind through, shift gears, the bellicose monotony,
as we fight to take our place in the underground economy.
The alleyways are ours, the sidewalks are ours,
The basements are ours, the drum bass is ours,
We enter the circus, and it becomes ours.
Step in time, we step in line
in ranks and rows and crowds and mobs.
Digital lights shadow magical sprites
transformed by their smiles in a narcotic fog.
We go all night.
No, don't look right, pay those wallflowers no mind.
They wandered in from a web site, a friend's friend, a taxicab driver, a wrong turn …
Be not fooled by their affectation,
a look they learned from cardboard cutouts at the gas station.
They sold a perfume, a purse, happiness at 20% discount.
No return policy, see retailer for exact amount.
On their faces they are bored, too scared to let go
of a sense of pride, too easily wounded to glow.
Yes, look straight, see how they jump?
They are one heart now, each beat a single thump.
Under arches, stairwells, doorways you can watch their faces ignite
Lighting simple tiny fires just to watch themselves take fright.
We go all night.
They climb upon each others backs
the throbbing bass upon their skulls.
As the pressure rises, the crowd contracts
we beat our hands against the walls.
We go all night.
Just this once, and just once more,
synapses fill and bulge but do not break.
Electric tributaries, the eddies and flows,
they sparkle, crackle, melt and ache.
We go all night.
Outside the giddy pulsing army
a Jack and Jane break themselves away.
They think they're hidden by the mist,
but passers-by in the dawn's blunt gray,
jostling for position assertively,
catch the lovers kissing furtively.
They shake their heads at the crude display.
They have never spent a night the way
that we go all night.
From a distance, we are just glowsticks and glowworms.
They don't understand what we do.
*Unedited First Draft, subject to revision
**From the desk of Doug Sunshine, "The Happies" Special Contributor
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