This time heaven
could not hold it anymore.
It was pouring like hell, and we
were dancing in the rain in steaming water
in our raincoats, hoods up,
four pocket-size flasks smuggled
inside our socks through seven security checks.

When the playing broke in,
it was a replay of a massive air raid,
the air defense projectors drilling
a swollen sky and searching for
a lost target over the smoky Babylon of life:
the hot dog stands, pretzels, lines to the can.

When they really got going,
all of them were lit, even John’s ghost
on the keyboard, as if he was driven
from Central Park
through the rush hour bottleneck
of Lincoln Tunnel to the swamped Meadowlands.

Christmas shopping was over,
the delta flow built up and flooded
the night mixing with the suspended raindrops
dancing in the crossfire of lights.

The sealed sound blew up, and the skeletons
were singing in the rain,
all the closets thrown open,
when something was taking off,
that fleeting feeling of freedom
for once, of something
that never really happened to us
yet still was alive, unfolding, squinting, blue, and raw,
smelling of blood and semen, pot,
sweat, grass, more and more
until the darkness stood still,
the deserted field was dead and snow-covered
with ticket stubs: “The Rolling Stones at Giants Stadium, September 94.”