Late Night Rockin'
It was a late night rockin’, sailin’on, a Kansas City Bop Band in a
local bar gettin’ down for a bunch of older folk steppin’ out. It was
real good to see, you gotta know.
When the time is right and the feet feel the need, there’s only one
thing to do. Get on your slick shoes and cut the floor with a good
lookin’ babe. Turn her round with a light in your eye and a bulge in
your fly.
Dig it!
It wasn’t like any bar I’d seen in a while. It had a stark class
without flash, a musty mood of sweat, desire, cigarettes and beer; no
strobes makin’ things unreal, just a flurry of tables for two, strewn
coasters, the hands and legs of a middle-aged waitress scurrying, three
dim wall lamps fickering, the ubiquitous Pabst face grinning in the
middle of his stream, slow-moving tin fans, beaten up copper ash trays,
the linoleum stage, four stuck, skinny, sweating musicians in their T’s
and obvious delight, a river of eyes to follow them up and down and me,
the stranger on their waves, captured bodies riding the blues rhythms
slow and low on the packed floor, thirsty mouths gettin’ wet for their
brews and some eager lips nearby, their Saturday night
‘I’ll-love-you-forever-tonight’ relief.
The wall-flowers, blooming glassy and sad, sucked on their Pabsts like
they were angry lovers getting ready to run. Some got curious about
me-and-my-pen. They bounded out of their tight circles, in a moment,
right in my face, booze breaths and bristles, they bawled, “what the
hell are you writin’ man?”
“Anything.”
”Yeah?”
”Yeah.”
“The fuck!” they yowled, then bounded back with a laugh and a lick of sweat.
I laughed, my pen danced, the band roared its blaring beat of
hard-knock-blues-riffs, and the people screamed. They flung out their
angers with a hoot and a laugh, a stomp in a drunken haze, a
happy-go-lucky-foot-stomping-beer-huggin-face-suckin-table-shakin leer
of good cheer. To you! It was a Saturday night fever, a breeze to float
on the dark belly of the night, because the week wasn’t real yet, and
there was a word for it hung on the cigarette clouds, hovering through
the bar to turn the dark into light, a struttin’ good belly of
‘take-me-if-you-can’ rhythms…GLORIA…such a gal to slip the
smoke off the toes of all the tappin’ well-wishers in hungry bars
where-ever, and she even smiled at me….
GODDAM!
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