Can't imagine why, but I feel like dancing

Tomorrow the couch will still be across the street, plaid worn down by the sun, all greyed by the light. Night will come again and under the flickering yellow lamp that hangs above the parking lot, its abandonment will be beautiful. The street will be full of keys again, profiles aflame like heroes in a detective film.

In the back of the bus, kids in baggy pants will be talking loudly to drunks, blending nonsense observations with bad grammar in a new language of slurs and prophesies. TVs will be on and beautiful worn-out single women in velour pajama pants will be cooking rice and talking to their cats. Teenagers will be smoking cigarettes, sitting up against closed stores on sidewalks, waiting for something to happen.

The dog and cat will be soft and sweet, sitting together on the back of the couch and watching people come home with their groceries. Old people will be taking their walks and grinning at memories. They'll be stopping young people with their friendly nonsequitors. The young people will stop and correct their posture, then the old people will smirk as they make their excuses and return to their hurried slumping.

The stairs to the edge of the freeway will tumble downhill wildly through an overgrown lot of weeds and bottles. The freeway itself will sigh like an ocean, and curious wanderers will pause at the window under the waterfall to peek out at its waves of headlights. The old office buildings will stand crooked and empty, awaiting the fire of sunset which will hit them and momentarily transport them into the bad photography of a hundred years ago. Neglected chairs and pipes will look up through their purple skylights at the pattern of footprint shadows and dream of glory.

The broken-hearted will still sit in their dirty apartments, staring into false windows and feeling trapped by their heavy hearts and the words they never say to anyone. They will go to bed before they're tired, to bring themselves closer to the couches and keys, men and women, dogs and cats, buildings and furniture they could touch if they could only get free.

Saturday night & the dancefloor is empty, lights pulsing offbeat to a song that hadn't much of one to begin with. It's skank & skeeze, cheap drinks & cheap dates: but we're here on our own beat, our own drum. Half done with two dollars of gin & tonic & we're out -- we're not quite clearing the floor because we've no brooms & nothing else would make a difference, anyway.

So it's dance, dance; dance to the rhythm of your soul, because there's nothing in the song to dance to: it's dance to your own beat, because the cute girl in grey cares nothing for you.

She has the best face on the floor; the best face in the bar, and you'd look lower but her jacket, grey but for red stripes, defies the fashion ala mode & is, indeed, not form-fitting enough to show more than a hint: but through that fog of gin you decide the face is enough. A pitcher or two later or a song or two before last call you commit to a simple compliment.

A 'hey, you have the best smile here tonight, & thank you for that' -- no strings, nothing but sincerity -- but after your friends disappear for piss and people and you disappear for a smoke (because she disappeared for something), she's gone.

And you're left there, dancing with people you've known for years, or for weeks that feel like years. Dancing, like a sad old candle, but dancing still, two hours in. And you can't imagine why, but you feel like dancing: something in the blood, (something in the alcohol in the blood) makes you move, wishing still for that one damn song...