Two fat bowls turned ashen like the
dirty, patchy snow
scattered around Buffalo’s parking lots.
I stashed my pipe in the hotel room
on my way to join everyone else
in our ride to Santa Con.
Second largest in the nation,
next to DC’s.
Our arrival was synced perfectly
with the edibles I’d eaten,
so I was plenty toasty to bar hop
through the chilly December afternoon.
Going into the second or third bar,
a reporter stopped my friend and I.
She filmed us belligerently
reppin’ the ‘Burgh—
two stoned yinzers
who inexplicably wound up
on some New York news station.
True to myself, I was clad
in a thin, 420-friendly Xmas sweater;
Mari Christmas? Merryjuana?
Too baked for flaky conversation
with the festive lot inside,
I texted flirty poetry to a
recent Tinder match, which quickly became
some one-sided attempt at a connection.
The usual holiday songs were spiced up by
noises of conflict;
partygoers tussling in bathrooms
and on the dance floor.
Shit, this was the third place
we went to where a fight broke out.
Dodging splattered blood and clumps
of pulled hair, I followed a friend who
was just as dead set on getting food.
