Celebrating my 64th Birthday in the Dead Zone

Bass beat from The Boardroom
stuns eardrums from a block away.
Flat screen t.v.s illuminate
a fenced courtyard where
four young women stuffed
into tiny black dresses smoke
and gossip at a cement picnic table.
The front door security guy
doesn’t bother checking my ID,
looks at wrinkles, greying hair,
waves me inside where a wall
of jolting music assaults,
insults the senses.
Twentysomething men line
the bar; trolling females
cluster optimistically
around bistro counters.
Inside the glass mezzanine,
red lights pulse.
A DJ spins disc after disc
of seething cacophony,
no discernible lyrics.
11 p.m. and it’s 93 degrees,
Central Valley hell,
night of Yom Kippur,
drinks all around,
not a single patron atoning.