My Coat Hanger Is a Necklace because I'm always just hangin' around. It's not uncommon to be mistaken for a piece of furniture. A backrest to throw a jacket on, or a stool to heave a pair of loafers over. Sometimes everyone's invited to the party except you- a troubling epiphany, especially when you're the host. Drunken renditions of songs you remember from high school, about boys coming of age and recognizing themselves in the beautiful, sleek visage of swelt, prowling jaguars from National Geographic posters hung up in the science lab. Colorfully plumed creatures sing their own praises, nearly slurred, the words already half-forgotten, in a chorus of gaily varnished martins, and the whole world sings with them; even the armchair hums a few bars, vibrating a hushed resignation to the whims of the crowd, wishing someone would perchance tilt their solo cup full of Kool-Aid and Captain Morgan over its cushion so the nauseating concoction can seep in and soak up some of the social torpor and relieve the inertia that has relegated it to mere rear support in this crowded den. Souls rise and fall, and the wind of jolly bluster goes out through the gaps in this creaky old house. The band plays; they invite a racket; they bang on all manner of things, and it makes a melody as sweet as amber scraped from a royal Egyptian apiary while they sing of dancing blades twirling in the clouds, dead men walking, dreams of misfortune as accosting as a traipsing shade, and close passes with the devil. A lamp is decked off a table; sparks course through the hot, swirling air and conversation; a flame creeps up the wall, out the window, and is hoofing on the roof before anyone is the wiser. By daybreak, the soirée and socialites are little more than a charcoal bed, still glowing, still laughing, still hot but hushed now to a crackle, inert but pensive, anticipating the day when St. Vitus will descend to their resting hearth. On that morning, the now-skeletal band will reskin their drums, stretch their own singed tendons to restring the chords of their piano, and strike up a tempo as these scorched merry bones carole in a train, off and over the horizon. And still I'll be hanging here, wondering when it will be my chance to join in this danse macabre.
