Birthday at the Dirty Dome

Hello inebriated youth:

you have all forgotten your inhibitions

at home on the sticky table-top

next to the red cups and empty shots.

Now here you all are,

by sheer Saturday coincidence

at the same place,

snapshots in the strobing light,

the blaring beat too loud

to hear each other speak.

Exalt in the blindness and the deafness,

for if you could hear the trash he whispered

in your close-tucked ear

you wouldn’t flirt your hands

across his back or hold him

pressed so near.

And if you could see her through the blur

of artificial fog and four too many beers

you wouldn’t want to bring her home

or keep your grasp

around her rear.
This is no place to talk,

but to dance, shimmy and shake

yourselves against each other

on a field soiled with spilt drinks,

shattered glass and plastic straws.

Lick the salt

and lose all that you’ve learned

in lecture to the bitter burn.

Chase with lime.

Here there are only practical lessons:

human sexuality,

lust, anatomy.

The excretion of sweat

and exchange of saliva,

a case study

in the short term effects of alcohol.
And me, I too was subject to this study,

here for her nineteenth birthday,

dancing dirty, dehydrated, and exhausted.

I was having fun, but now

what separates all of you from me

is the onset of sobriety.