Strangers On A Friday Night

On Friday nights I call my upstairs heaven
And my basement hell
Because on the second floor we play
Simon and Garfunkel
And Springsteen
And Muddy waters
And all the lights are on
But underground the strangers squeeze around the keg barrel
Like piglets squirming for the mother’s teat
We put the disc jockey in the dungeon like the wild child
So he can stay alive without the neighbors hearing his noises
His flashing lights and broken disco ball in the thick darkness
Is like a midnight murder scene
Silhouetting the wild dancers
Shaking like branches on a haunted oak tree
Who have no movement
Only x-rays from the lightening flashes of the strobe light
The girl I’m seeing is crouched over
Moving up and down like shallow waves
While some 20 year old stranger is rhythmically rubbing
His zipper between the back pockets of her jeans
She must have seen my outline against the wall
Because her arms are bent up awkwardly
Like a boxer from the 40’s
And her head is bowed low behind her fists
Hiding, hoping I mistake her for someone else
She’s pretends to keep dancing
My stomach rots
My spine jerks once
My skull squeezes out my flaming eyes, lunging them their way
My knuckles meet the kids eyebrow
Like a dull axe pounding through the bark of a tree
And he crumbles, branches and all
Like a building blown up from the bottom
Like splashing into a drum-set
Flipping up the thick tiled top
That was never screwed to the legs
Of the table
Holding the two turn tables and laptop
“two birds with one stone” I think
As I swiftly turn my back to the dirty girl
Being perfectly sure not to let her know she exists
And I walk slowly towards the stairwell
Staring lifelessly ahead
The back of my shirt stretches back
Then snaps out of the desperate pinch of her reaching finger tips
The rap song is skipping and repeating

The red lights are swirling on the ceiling
There’s a loud, deep, thumping
Subwoofer in my chest
As I run up the two flights of steep spiral stairs
Back to heaven.