A.G.E's Joint

  Crescent noon man In the Crescent City Lying forlorn on a Couch Buck Moon band Sound drifting across Esplinade While daiquiris are recycled Making more Crescent Moon Men AI Test New Orleans is Purgatory

Two glasses in On the last day of the year. Listening to my son and his friends Laughing in the other room. Echoing back to another day Another time When it was me as the entertainer Or the entertained. Not that it matters Doing the same thing over And expecting a different result Is still insanity. The guardian angel aghast At the proceedings of the night. Seeing things through the alcohol lens Instead of as they are or were. Now, thirty years later It is my son's turn To chase illusions And hope they become real.  So before the last leaves fall And the glass ball drops  I wonder at where I am And where I will be. 

Ah, the sign we all ignored. Oh, we saw it all right. And we still had the drink. Went upstairs with that person, Whose name escapes us now. Night more smelt and felt  Than seen. Awakening we find The dog where they were.

In the early years of our marriage, my wife and I loved to go out to eat.   It was just something we did every Friday night after work.   I’d pick her up at the train station and we would head out.    One fall Friday, we chose one of our favorite places, Good Ol’ Days .   It was a bar with an outdoor patio that we loved to sit on cool nights. It was a converted Dairy Queen that sat between a tire store and another bar on a very busy road.     I’d had been a regular customer and an employee of this place long before our marriage and the management always extended the best in southern hospitality to us.   Even to the point of a cold pitcher of beer being at the table any time we were seated.     But this night was going to be a bit different. As he handed us our menus, our waiter, Karl, nodded to the table behind us where two very drunk guys were sitting. They had a hard time keeping their heads erect and It looked like they w...

Maggie was confused and alone.  Everything around her was spinning.  Steam rose from the pavement across the street.  Halos formed around the streetlights and they pulsed in her sight.   They were a curious design.  Copied from a 19 th century photograph, they became a symbol for a developer’s dream, to turn this former steel mill into a bustling urban center. It took 18 years, and the first two buildings opened to great fanfare.  The scene looked like the stage set for “Rent”.   But to Maggie, it had become a nightmare.   She was slumped against the apartment building.  All she could remember was dancing with that spiky red haired chick disco in Buckhead. The one that looked like it had been imported from ....Brazil.....she guessed.    Loud music and perfumed bodies surrounded her as the music pulsed and throbbed.  Boys as girls and girls as boys jumping and bumping with the beat.  Was...