Rhapsody in Red

In a way it's like sitting in a jazz club
late at night, after enough drinks to be mellow
but not so many that you don't notice the shot.

There's smoke in the room and smoky music.
And you don't know all the people, even if
the faces seem kind of friendly and familiar.

The music makes you ache more than a little,
with longing for half remembered friends
on other nights, in other, even smokier clubs.

It's a little like that except that the smoke
is from a revolver and one of those nice faces
is staring straight up at the unreachable moon.

And instead of a classy brush on a snare-head,
you hear footsteps running away and the echoes
of your own tired, ineffectual yell to stop.

Or maybe it's like a dream about that club,
in the seconds before the police raid the place
for reasons unknown and eternally unknowable.

Unanswerable, like the body there on the floor.
Dreamily, you holster your gun and you light
a smoke and you wonder what you'll tell the police.

And somewhere in your mind,
you can hear the saxophone wailing.