After the Party

"muhler com sax"
image borrowed from bing

After the party

think i prefer urban ugliness
to sunsets over candy-coated landscapes,
mainly because it feels familiar and it fits
the stage i‘m in, a life pinned
to a fallen world, wearing borrowed dresses &

i leave the christmas party late– in the bagnio
opposite the road, peak period, they try
to buy what you can‘t really sell and
in the clouds, blown into night air i

still see them, even if it’s hours back,
eight hundred employees, giving tribute to
the founder’s widow, sitting small & humble
in a wheelchair and i‘m close enough to
see her tears, maybe she‘d love to
trade our long applause for a ride back
on the time machine, to the moment
when their eight child started walking,
the first kiss or when he said, he’d start
this business, brought her scarlet roses
& i’m wondering

how many of the real important things
in life happen on stages or in board rooms,
parliaments and wars– and how much in the
places no one sees except the actors,
lying bent into each other– passing

empty windows, nightly roads shine winter wet,
my feet hurt badly from the heels i wear, one hand
on my sax, the other on the steering wheel,
(just metaphorically) i am frozen to the core

& reaching home i find a yellow post it on
the bedroom door, saying „you can wake me
if you want“, i pause a second– & again i see
her eyes, empires built with blood & sweat
on human flesh, then

slowly let my coat glide to the floor,
place the sax case next to it, countless threads
weave odd, unordered patterns in my head and
stepping from the shade, i cautiously undress
into his warmth

.

claudia shoenfeld

Posted over on her site Jaywalking the Moon
Listed as #8 over on dVerse Poets-Open Link Night 23