Nights Of 1998 Poem by Ernest Hilbert

For Winn Coslick

It's boiling up: my tin-ceilinged cavern
Downtown. I'm struggling to play a record,
But my fingers quiver and the needle
Shrieks like scraped chalk through the speakers. I turn
It up, and up, and up. I'm lit like a war
With pills, lines, so many drinks I can't feel.
I find two women shooting heroin
In my bed. I'm coming up so hard I puke.
O Christ the summer is stunned with lilacs!
Someone gets kicked in the nose, and then
More arrive, and more, and would you look
At all this, and God the noise, we can't go back—
We fall apart like ancient stars, sparks—
Gold like pollen blown across all this dark.