AT THE DANCE

I stood
in a sea of tuxedos
vacantly sipping
a probably poisoned
martini
while the band was playing
polkas
crazy polkas
dirty polkas
and they all wore matching
clownsuits
sometimes sounding
like bananas
or some long-lost lawrence
welklings
as around me
conversation
ebbed and flowed
in chiming billows
I was drunk
and getting drunker
and the band was getting
louder
and the party worse
than ever
and the hostess was
a demon
and the waiter smelled
like Satan
and the crowd was
getting larger
louder
longer
than a dark night on
Uranus
someone passed me
cocktail weenies
which were not your
average thingies
but were living
breathing
monsters
tiny evils
staring upward
screaming Eat me
screaming Jesus
with a voice like
Greta Garbo
then a cloud blew
from the dancefloor
and it knocked me
off my halo
as I turned and
looked behind me
all I saw 
were teeth like
tapshoes
or like tinkling
ivory hammers
between lips of
ruby rubber
flapping up
and down obscenely
unattached
to any reason
they just flapped there
waved like worms
I couldn't take them
I was broken by
their chatter
dropped my drink and
took another
and the lips went
streaming onward
then I noticed
eyes
like razors
like the scalpels of
disaster
probing into my 
enigma
it was like some
wretched novel
so I ran
but still I stood there
then the band
came into focus
like the anger
of Jehovah
and those lips and eyes were
spinning
in a godforsaken
polka
I collapsed
the current dragged me
down that river
of tuxedos
bridal gowns and
clouds of nothing
sweet sweet nothing
falling into
dizzy rainbows
a Niagara of
pretensions
and I crashed
upon the boulders
wrapped in godless
polyester
shattered by
the dippy lifestyles
of the vainly
unrepentant
and as waves of
rotten polkas
broke upon
my hopeless psyche
other lips
kept coming at me
eyes and polkas
lips so hungry
and tuxedos
bad tuxedos
them tuxedos up from Hades
other lips
and more tuxedos
and another fucking polka
I was losing my
martini
in the cloud of
eyes
and eyelids
coming
coming
coming at me
help me Jesus
I'm so sorry
use your magic
x-ray vision
and destroy them
but another
desperate polka
threw my head into
a tailspin
and old Jesus
he was gone and
there were eyes and lips and
everything
and more and more and
more and more and
I was screaming
but my voice was
in Australia
so them angels
couldn't hear me
it was bad and
getting worser
badder
madder
and depraveder
as the lips and teeth and
polkas
and the eyes and
the tuxedos
and the demons
coming at me
at me at me at me at me
it was madness
I was psychoed
like some Alfred
Hitchcock movie
in the Bates Motel of
polkas
in a drunken
Transylvania
I was Frankenstein's
abortion
being chased by
eyes and polkas
as I stood there
almost screaming 
as I reached out
for the bottle
but I slipped
and I was crashing
down into
the cocktail weenies
which were snapping
tearing at me
and the lips and eyes and
polkas
and an army of
tuxedos
just a solid
wall of demons
I was gone I couldn't
take it
I was breaking up
exploding
but just when it
felt like fusion
I awakened
in the bathroom
kinda shaken
but
alive.


                                          (Mike O'Brien)