Falling or climbing

Falling or climbing

It’s not the same

Not for me

Maybe you have seen it before

Maybe I have

The way some people scrabble

In the dirt

To build a future

Full of broken windows

They jumped through

As if they were hoops

When the truth of their foolishness

Hits them between the eyes

Knocking them senseless.

They kept fighting

For as long as they could

Played a few hands of stud

Wearing a flatscreen smile

Afraid to give anything away

That could be used against them

In the countback.

Las Vegas

Is a real place

So they say.

It lies unverified

Way past the ice

In the desert, where the molten scars

Of old battles

Are barely dry

The rain is so hot it scalds

Nobody walks in the open air.

Oxygen is pumped in

To keep everything fresh

But the smell of decaying flesh

Is as pervasive as the taint of failure

That's when they jump.

I have yet to see it

But the ground huggers

Pick up the pieces

Swarm over the dumping grounds

Searching for leftovers

Among the drying leaves

A page here a few words there.

A book is quite the prize

To be read under the covers

Out loud

After midnight

With a bunch of like-minded.

Not that they come along too often

Too many live in the dark

Freezing in the cold

Hunkered down

Wrapped in the fading light

Dreaming of warm summer days

Smoking Gitanes

Drinking Champagne

In a flute

With a quartet playing

In the park

Miles Davis

Is a cool catch.

He can be heard

Through the window

Of the flat on the third floor

As another fallen angel

Flies by

And I stumble through

The glass wishing I had stopped

To savour the moment

Over a single malt

Before plunging headlong

Into life.