TONIGHT WE WON’T EVER DIE
BEACH PARTY
We were at a dance party
It was like a beach party
Sometime around the time
You were single and raging
Before performing gave you a stroke
Your marriage fell apart
Calvin Johnson was the deejay
At this dive bar I can’t say
Because I’m shook
When I hear the name of my bar they tore apart
And trashed the red booths
People getting smashed in the parking lot
Getting into fights
Sometime those nights we crashed
Design school parties
Who threw the best parties at a school known
For agriculture kegs and bumfuck
And Mykki Blanco was around
My sister says
Coming up to her car to say Hi there
Twenty-something years ago
Before everything
On Hillsborough Street in a hoopty
Twenty-something years old
I wasn’t even in school
I just grabbed a cup, grabbed a can
Grabbed a pool cue
Grabbed your hand and lead you onto the dancefloor
Between the sopping red booths
The dub narcotic sound system
And the bar we danced the night astray
BONES
Somebody should tell her
She's making a big mistake with that older guy
When I met my ex-girlfriend in a suite
At The Public Hotel
Elevator girls on the lift
Said let's party upstairs
Stow your clips in a locker
Take a selfie on the roof we're hot
The concierge will send you a make-up artist
"If you need one"
That's what they say when I walk into my suite
I say, Thanks
I'm going to read
Blast A.R.E. Weapons
Grind this mattress into a pile of bones
GASPING
We danced at Legends
In the warehouse district at night
Beneath millennial twilight
Parking lots we skated the ramp of night
And we danced and we partied
In the clubs and the bands
And we were on Flint Place
In the year of the forever night
Listening to The Smiths in the rain
Gasping, dying, but somehow still alive
Because tonight we won’t ever die
And the night is the dogwood state
When it was red cups forever
Lost ransacking the night in the
Backyard spraying foam from a keg
At the unfoldment of stars
Across a new desperate century
Steal
If you ever stole something
From a retail store in the mid-to-late-90s
And you put Weezer
On blast
In a Mercury Tracer
And ran red lights
Across the strip of your hometown
And you knew the surveillance state
Had started but it was 1994 and Kurt Cobain was gone
And you could outrun the law
You could grow up punk
In a punk house
In the coastal plain
And watch them all overdose
ALLEN STREET
You said No to watching
Nan Goldin’s cat
I still don’t understand what
Happened there but
Swimming in Norman Jaffe’s
Pool is something else
Brian De Palma is deaf
You say
Jennifer Lopez and Donna Karan
This is still New York
DKNY
This is the place to be
Top it off
This is the place to walk from your
Building to your car
Like it’s a catwalk
And you are
The toppest model
Going topless
In a studio on Allen Street
COCKTAIL PARTY
Cocktail party shit
The vibe is lit
The tea is it
And every day off Page
Six
Is a good day
Photos by Jon Leon.