the author spoke into his harmonica

It's time to leave a book launch when
they won't let you sing Lefty Frizzell
and when the author decides to stop talking,
lifts out a harmonica, and gently hums
through it at the corner table. His wife
in a red and white Finnish sleeveless
dress, the two young poets in black
numbers nimbly smoking rollies under
the rusted, police-tagged scaffolding.
Its time when you realize the washrooms
are the best rooms in the bar and youve
spent half your night in there, when
the books editor is carrying around
a board game for 4 years +, when the
ladies from the cancelled book television
show are game and ordering rounds and
are fearless in their new unemployed
auras, when the jury does not award
karoake points for Best Hat, and when
your baby has left her card behind the
bar and all the drinks somehow mysteriously
get put on her tab. Yes my friends, it
is time to go home and remember it's
recycling night and careen down the
thirty-one steps with the grey and
blue boxes and, as you strip out of
your shirt and see the yellow recycling
truck approach, realize both boxes
get tossed in together, just as you
get tossed into bed and dream a buzzling
underwater drama involving a meat hook.