Literature
One of Those Nights
One of Those Nights
by p.b. wells
Every groundball dropped.
every pass slapped out of the air.
every line that went limp mid-sentence.
every note bent so bad the crowd winced.
every cue blown like I was born to choke.
They come back at 3 a.m..
the poems that should’ve been drowned at birth,
the fights where I folded fast,
the rejections that came form-letter efficient,
all of it crawling out of the dark
to kick me in the teeth.
They don’t fade.
they scratch, they bite,
they piss on the rug
and laugh while I choke on it all.
The Admiral’s in my gut,
sloshing gas,
licking a match,
whispering about the SR9
like it’s holy scripture.
and hell,
I almost buy it.
one little squeeze and poof,
the whole ugly circus goes quiet.
I laugh,
because it’s true.
death sounds like bleach,
like clean sheets,
better than reruns
of every fuck-up I ever made.
But I don’t.
I torch another joint instead,
scorch my lungs,
blow smoke at the ceiling
like I’m charging