and there's no chance of getting you out of my head

the wedding was at 3pm, and started late. A quiet wedding, a happy wedding.
Now 5pm, the bar is open, I'm drinking. Jack and coke. chatting and snacking before the reception. My suit is gray. my drink is cold. it looks good. it tastes good. smoke inhale. exhale. jack and coke one, two three. maybe I should slow down, I say. We're moved upstairs, to the top, to the banquet hall.
Table 15, table 15 represents. We're the archaic friends, I say. Jokes, all jokes, some truth in jest. We're her oldest, longest friends, only a handful left. Jack and coke four, five, six. Table 15, table 15, it's cold in the far corner. We're last to get food cause we're the last table, he says, we're table 14. I point and say table 15. Jokes, all jokes. Dancing, meeting her family. Cheers to the groom. Cheers to the bride. Jack and coke seven, eight.
Waiting by the bar, talking, watching friends get drunk. The night is so young. 7, maybe 8pm. Jack and coke nine, ten, eleven.
9 o'clock, the reception is coming to an end. Dance with the bride, she can't talk or she'll cry. So happy, so happy for you, I whisper. Jack and coke tweleve, thirteen, no, thirteen and fourteen. Can;t be fourteen already. ?
No desire to end the night. Only 10pm, still young, hasn't even started yet. Leave for the old city. Walk slowly with the mates and his girl. Walk slow, her high heels hurt. shoes killing my feet too. The mates bird forgets her ID. Head back to their flat, she stays, we go out again. where to? stay down town, I say. The jazz bar has a pool table, we migrate. pool at 11pm, or was that midnight? jack and coke fifteen,sixteen, maybe twenty?
pool and cigarettes in the small back room. jazz group raps notes to the small pub filled with dark, dark tables and intimate booths filled with all kinds. Game one, jack and coke 19, twenty, thirty, I've lost track. 5pm to, it's now almost 2am. 9 hours of whiskey. 9 hours of drinking and I'll be fucked if the night's near ending. Anybody know this drunk guy we're playing pool with now? Funny geaser. Beats us all. quarter till, almost last call. Get two more drinks mate, he hands me a 20. More drinks, jack and coke oh fuck it.
Give up on the game, leave the bar as it closes behind us. Too early to quit now. only 2am. after hours joints. P&P won't let us in. Walk eastbound. trash strew streets. the city dark and seedy and I love it's every disgusting sewer grate and every dispicable lush that's falling out of the establishments onto the sidewalks.
get your hooker pal and hope it's a bird, can't you see you're holding up traffic? Pissing on somebody's fence in some back alley. Thought I saw the 5-O walking before I turned the corner. The post denies us. no membership card. To the diner. Pissing again behind a dumpster next to an old boarded up restruant off the strip. back on the strip, suit looks good, tie loosened more and more. One step at time, set free, set free. wait to get our food, utterly disappointed. Can't keep my eyes open guys. coffee, one, two three, I'm not even going to try now. closing in on 5am. Walk away from it all, walk away and be a better man. 5:30 am, back to the apartment. set the clocks back, shit. It's 4:30 again? Shit, night can't end, night can't end. Unsucessful attempts at persuasion of sunrise nightcap. night can't end like this, night can;t end fading away, passing out before it's over, passing out before the pale blue light of sunday morning kisses my pupils.
return to the night, return to the city. alone on the streets of philadelphia on a sunday morning. What's the line in that song?
"Got a wounded soldier stance"
would you ever be there if I needed you? your elegance? the urbanity of urban landscapes draped in a foggy light of mythology to share, to share? no, I don't think so
no, I don';t think so
it's a new day on this cold sidewalk lifted into the air by mother-like eagle claws and dropped falling feather-like onto the mattress on the floor of my apartment bedroom.
the soft blue of crying light was the end through the curtains over my window
into sleep.