Philosophy of Twenty: A Poem in Blank Verse

[shutupimtalking]

Halloween night, I was in riot grrrl
dress, piss drunk at Piccadilly, blushing
pink through smog. I could taste the dank
air from street urinals and would smoke cloves
and purse lips like a question was forming,
"pourquoi?" The streets were sullied mirrors of
existential thought, "pourquoi?" Like why did
Godard wear his shades at night? Or why
did the luster light of Marxist ardor
become flat like the beer in our bottles?
Why does love move like traffic? Never
mind. That was the night I caught my finger in
a door of a nightclub. First, excitement.
A climax of awe and heat at the crease
and crush of bone had me laughing and shaking
with my breath. Blood and bass throbbed,
cigarette smoke, a hand brushed up my skirt,
before the pain that came late, like the dead
midnight train I caught alone. Teeth clenched, the
life that rushed violet to my finger's tip
sobered twenty years of outdated lines
about what it means to be alive. My
eyes search the metro sign with a Sartre-like
look, and asked the ghost that sat beside me
what it's like after the last rider leaves,
...said something unintelligible, pretty.