on ecstasy

Platinum and peroxide-ridden,
wisps of smoke
on ecstasy, almost like film sprinkled with acid,
acrid and smoking in the dark somewhere,
under a flickering streetlight by a bar teeming with bodies,
pupils dilated to the point where
her eyes are black and reflective,
a neon cat drawing words with
light,
a flame weak enough to put out with your thumb and index finger. But she’s
laughing, laughing
coy enough with all her slits and holes, and
she’s the insides of glow sticks,
electric thrumming, a bass solo
a Jackson Pollock in the blacklight
but sometimes she remembers what it’s like when you play the acoustic
something about how acid eats film like the mind forgets memories
she keeps trying to hold onto the smoke you exhale,
as if she’s foolish enough to think this will preserve her, make her
ageless,
a time with fancy cigarette holders and fringe,
garters and thigh highs,
bright flashes and puffs of smoke mingling in the air with men’s aftershave.

Drag her close by her long pearls or you might lose her,
all her coy slits and holes and dents and marks,
all her laughter dying down to a serious silence
when she grabs your hand and asks you what it’s like
how it feels to lose someone
and you say that it starts out as a tiny little hole that someone drilled into your head
in your sleep and it grows larger,
slow and cancerous and it’s like swallowing glass
like you’re cut to pieces and there’s only one person to fix it but that person’s in
a coma,
under the influence of lights and sound
vibrating apart like guitar feedback
ageless like Jimi Hendrix
but as nontraditional as seven nation army
and her lungs are bruised leather
worn like a permanent hospital bracelet.

Maybe this is how she remembers it,
in smoke filled basements and conversations with old friends about
substandard living as a student and roach fingers
and how you wish you could forget what sleep was again
and come alive, every coy slit and hole, every imperfection,
revolve slow on the spot like a singer’s closing note,
waver towards the finish and then stagger slowly,
as if that could reconcile the tiny hole that started all of this.