Tim Frank

When The Den Became The End 

I got blitzed on pills 
that stirred
upside-down skies 
in a club
named The Den.
Its speakers towered 
like pagan stones, 
and pulsing lights were strung
across four dance floors 
sparking fire on staggered platforms and bars
where the thirsty 
licked their lips like windmills.
Stomping ten miles 
to vibrant deep house 
I could see 
the sunshine in wet flesh
and hundreds of eyes 
flashing red and cobalt blue.
Dark moods hid in the shadows 
so I took more and more drugs 
to fight the sonorous gloom.
When The Den became a bar 
called The End,
everything but the name 
remained the same—
black walls,
broken toilet doors
the array of luminous lights.
But in my mind 
there was a shift.
Missives and sermons 
of madness 
appeared in the cracks
of the ceilings
and head-to-toe mirrors.
My mind was gone—taken 
by otherworldly forces.
So, I moved on 
to new pills, legal pills,
built to hook me to the floor,
to sweep my breath 
into gentle rhythms 
and cool my hot thoughts.
I would sit in The End’s overrun smoke garden 
hidden beneath foliage,
comparing the old and the new,
the past and the present.
I learned 
a good drug is hard to find 
and most times there is no choice
at all—
you get what you’re given 
and you must simply adjust,
even if it means 
sitting in The End
smoking 
another cigarette—
waiting for them to damn you, too.