And what I mean by that is…
The mercury red was dripping through the lights of the
downtown bars – it was blood running through
rainbows
and icy chalices clinking with the rhythm of this night
beat,
the smoke curled its fist and whirled on out into the
streets –
we were looking for things to do in Denver
and we were most definitely hip and super fresh.
The sky was dark, wet and gray
the rain was coming down in spittles,
and the cold beacons burst forth from the skyline
towers
and we breathed exponentially as we shook with cold
outside the place
where the band was playing hard and loud
and the women were drugged up tight,
they were all looking for a fight
erotic clashes in unfamiliar bedrooms
searching for the light switch
in some unfamiliar hall…
and we wandered, Soledad the sailor and I,
into the billiards parlor on the corner
where all Christmas shopping
was kicked to the curb
and mean looking men
were grasping sticks and swearing and swilling beer

So we caught two seats at the bar
and were lost in the noise
when something caught our attention
a brooding and bulbous man with wispy hair, atop a head shaped like a golden pear

He was clutching a magnet and a metal clam
reciting poetry all nonsense
something Spanish and insanely divine
about Albuquerque and nutty Nob Hill
and the love he held for well-groomed dolls
and it was a whacked-out scene
and we wondered, Soledad and I,
if we had shot ourselves up
with some mad horror show voodoo
and simply had forgotten…
but it was all real
as the man shed his black leather jacket
and made his way confidently
to the smoky stage, under scattered lights
and stood before a crowd who ignored him,
and so he tapped the mic with a hint of nervous fear
and began to speak…
“and what I mean by that is …”
and it went on and on from there,
like someone had plugged him in a bit too long,
his fiber optic cables all juiced up
and so the incessant talk came on like a flood
about the place he loved
and the games he dug
and the restless nights that drove him to kill…

So Soledad and I just sat there at the bar
sipping our Parrot Bay rums
watching the stitched up 5-minute idol
rant and rave
and his tsunami of words
followed us out the door and down the streets
and we rejuvenated our mission
to find things to do in Denver when you’re hip — and super fresh
Soledad wanted to climb a tower,
I wanted to find an all-night bakery
when from out of a crack in the buildings came a flash,
because we were hip,
we were super fresh
and we had become immaculate icons
of this new human race,
we could no longer afford to walk,
we had to run…

We had hoped to have some orange apples fall from
the sky
but all we met up with were detour signs
it went suddenly backward to Halloween
and we thought Denver was playing a trick on us
but we liked it anyway
so we tripped it to some mad cathedral
on this eerie hill in the middle of town
it was this great spire
of grass and rock and trees and torn down fences
and from this vagrant, fragrant vantage point
we could see a million trillion lights
all bubbling up from the floor of this town
and for a second we didn’t feel lonely
we felt hip and super fresh
as we found things to do in Denver
and then something somewhere
suddenly came with a burst of singing
and it was like some mad hipster
had broken free from his cell
and was bellowing forth
every ache he had ever felt…

So we stayed on that hill
not really talking,
but rather dreaming of what our lives would be like —
tomorrow
and we were afraid of the sorrow that might come
but then we realized we couldn’t worry about that
because somehow, some way,
life works itself out
and whether or not we would be strung up with
diamonds
or drown in the yellow dust
we were here right now in Denver
and damn we were hip and super fresh.

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