Fred Aiken Writing

Wednesday night, the city comes alive

as we make our way to the dingy concert hall that someone got stabbed right outside of last month,

a whirling crowd, the beat of the bass,

a building energy encapsulates

a moment, time fighting to look still,

the music flows in between the lines of harmony and sickness,

without an escape hatch,

an aura begins to form, expanding,

before deflating outside the concert, curbside,

bleeding out with nowhere to go and nothing to see