The Lineup at Paradise Hotel

Back at it again,
Usual tricks
And old time kicks.
Ain't nothin’ new
Under tired suns,
Where all that’s seen
Becomes unseen.

One hundred (100) junkies
From every star and stripe,
Indiscriminate fixation
Fills each heart and mind
Who swear fealty to the flag
Of reckless indulgence.

Every caste and strata of
Desperate reject
And hopeless soul,
Line up for a final fix
In the twilight years
Of an empire crumbling
Under centuries of abandon.

All those drunken beggars
Whisper,
Black cat
Caught little white mouse,
Dinner on her mind.

Every street kid smoking fenty
Off a ragged scrap of foil,
Staring at the pearlescent dime bag
That floats in their night sky,
Slowly growing smaller
And larger
And then smaller again,
As the days turn to weeks,
Turn to months.

We musn’t forget
All those unhinged
Speed freaks
Who blew their gaskets,
Skirting around the bend
Of unknowable stats
And facts with no meaning.

Then move up,
To tweaked out Bay Street,
Caught with pants around ankles
At depraved sex orgies
In the corridors of power.
Their inscrutable sacrifice
Of blood rent in debt
From paupers and whores,
To a God so unholy
I can’t even print his name;
$ucce$$.

All of these,
And many more.

My brothers, my sisters,
My friends with genitals so confusing,
Even they don’t know what they are.
All of us gather like this,
And share stories so dark,
They make the moon
Shine in embarrassment.
All the while,
Some kid in the corner, with
Knowledge, lingers out of sight,
Like a scratch
On your favourite record.

Just something there, forever,
And more.