Toledo Ain't that Bad

Eating burnt baby back ribs under dim red lamps

Around wooden tables adorned with good friends and

                                                Conversations:

The difference between nerds and geeks or poets and artists.

We are all one of the sort, in our own way

About Williams and Elliot, the trite bastard and his lake,

                        Of Monet and Thomas, McCord and Ferlinghetti, Ginsberg, a man!

And of love, and death and sex, the girl with good hair he should have fucked:

                                                These things that matter to

                                    Us.  Trading and out-shining, and Reciting

In Vanity- drinking Stoli, or bitter DeadMan beer, tasting as though filtered through 

One -Til a street sweeper hotfoots past in prep for the erasure of the

            Perfect night Shared with lovers            

                                                            And friends

And others. Lungs hurt from menthols bummed on that porch

We totter home to dreamless pillows, cold and inviting