Motel Room Poem by Butch Decatoria

Vegas heats up in these idle lungs
Summer weekends begin their urge
like a roar of blood in the ears, no anticipation dwells so
not even those addictions we've reasoned to be just
or justified as youthful relief...

I sit as still as the neon blinking through drab curtains
can allow / without obsessing into a tick / a nervous twitch

The lumps on this bed, like ghosts
from forgotten trysts, seem to jab / to escape /
even when sleep attempts to drain itself from the body
due to the lack of it.

It smells vaguely familiar of 2000 flushes
and ashtrays with liquor stains
hurled from mouths overfed with parties and past
indiscretions / guilt / scattered
on the carpet, and in the corner
reminds me of our foolish frivolity / heavy with loss
hope, laughter / shapes and shadows
in that corner where you vomited
with tears and self realizations of mistakes
with a chuckle at its absurd truths,
followed by a blank stare...

Your face in its tracks of saline depth
like a painting of twilight rites of passage
which we had to burden in bewitching hours / early
before the sun / sobering
those times we diluted and ache for still

As I recollect in the hush of a motel 6
Drunken neighbors with their sounds of sex / taboo /
echoes our lost twenties
learning to live and define emotions - like secret messages
from devils and Jesus
washing over us / growing up,
losing days to nights / so doubtful and wretchedly alive
in the uncertainty of oblivion
of searching for its celebration.../ losing ourselves...

I sit in this hotel room
wretchedly alive / in and out of neon lights
trying to find an emotion
staring at the corner / shadows of you / vomiting
A message that I only now begin to understand
from tears to echoes
laughter still to be / Heard here
In memory's sorrow / oblivion
While I sit / unfeeling
before dawn, hours hollow...

And so wretchedly alive
Like sleepless starlight
Wordless and still
Wretchedly
Alive.