Through those doors

I.

I half expect to see her

posed on a slick black piano, 

stretched across the top in

blue sequined skin and spilling

sex through a mic to an

audience of penguins.

I told her ten o'clock sharp,

but tonight I'm late

trying to adjust years in

mirror like windows outside,

new wrinkles, wider threads,

brushing off dead white flakes

from suit shoulders, the dandruff

of age and unsaid things.

II.

She's at the bar as I waltz

through, men's ultra violet

looks crisping her bronze,

their lust like smoke clouding

the corners and cavities inside.

Her hair is wheat under summer's

wind, shimmering blonde with

candle glow, a grace I disturb

walking up like sudden weight

on still water.

We drink martinis,

mine dirty, hers clean.

She smokes menthols through

a long stem filter.

My words are generic: the office,

the city. She counters with stories

of nights deep like trench

coat pockets, accents of gin

and jazz, neon and spades, nights

I used to know something about.

We talk till the bands last notes,

the bartender's last call,

stabbing lonely olives with

toothpicks at the bottom of

our glasses,

waiting for the

time we have to walk back

through those doors,

parting like roots sprung

from the same seed,

growing green in different places.

Marlboro Man 

It's a slow take over,

watching embers and ash

conquer white paper,

black tar creeping down,

sizzling like hot bacon

grease on bare skin,

the crackle of cold milk

on dry cereal.

It's that slight squeeze that

keeps me hooked, the

way the throat knocks back  

for a second -- chest rising,

stretched muscle, left side

tingling like needle pricks,

each drag a euphoric

kick to the ribs.

I blow out smoke,

catching the tip and

sending off a hundred red hot

flakes whirling like angry

fireflies, spiraling up quick

and falling, burning orange

then nothing.

There's a comfort here

in that familiar pain, that

familiar twisting of the wind

pipe that travels down and splits

the breast plate right through

the center, pectorals wishing

they could break open and

flap like wings.

Sometimes I think

that I should quit, kick the

habit, kill the monkey.

But then I'm left, weighing

stress against the value of

breath, and watching

the scale tip

in fatigue's favor.

Bourbon Street Silk

We listened to blue rhythms

and one man bands,

vibrato and hard breath,

toasting youth with

fake absinthe on the strip

We drank cheap wine and long

islands ,smoked hash on busy

sidewalks, weary of cops on

horseback and the echo of

crunched beer cups under hoofs

The streets are still packed

in the off season,

young men from Dallas,

girls from Spokane,

neon glow and body heat

turning sweat thick in corner

clubs, swaying drunk in bars

only half enclosed like

shoe box dioramas, the same

heartbeat without carnival

masks or jester hats

We walked down the left

side of Canal street, dreaming of

dirty dances with southern belles named

Stacy or Savannah, tattooed with

low back butterflies flying out from

tight denim crevices

Its was late then, no more trolleys

on the road running on loud

rusted tracks, young bodies now

slowly straying off behind

building edges and brick,

like alley cats hunting the last

scraps of easy midnight meat

We stumbled along pavement,

wallets in our front pockets,

three silhouettes with heavy limbs

and hearts, the adolescent high

subsiding, a hard come down,

still grabbing at youth's shadow

and wishing to wear her forever,

like silk stitched to the skin.

For The Masses

if only it would Ring, man,

if only it would Ring,

Ring like ten thousand watts in a dogs ear

through building size speakers in city streets

Ring like roaring oil fires, like the

echoes and screams from bottom level reverb

to get the asses and elephants running

Ring like limbs breaking windshields

like power lines smacking sidewalks

like fast channels churning up Big Easy roads,

flushing out the unfortunate pale

with black media cockroaches

to roof tops

for public view

Ring like rain clouds hailing

Asian car parts over Detroit

like yellow beaks ripping into dead flesh

like the cries it costs

to sound cracked bells,

like bombs

shattering poor merchant stands

and wooden market square

booths.

For Braces and Miami Beach

Maybe we were the ulcers in Dads stomach,

or the stones that turned Mom yellow

or the disease that bent our grandmother

like thin copper wire.

Maybe we shouldnt have ran to them

each time we cut our fingers.

Maybe we shouldnt have played at night

in busy streets.

Maybe you shouldnt have gone

all the way to South beach,

leaving them behind

at barely seventeen.

Maybe we shouldnt have drank

the whiskey in their closet,

the good whiskey, the wedding present whiskey,

too young with flushed cheeks.

Maybe they didnt have to drive

that broken green minivan

so you could live in Miami

and I could smile

with straight teeth.

Whitewash

I dreamed your face chalk white

bleached under city sidewalk lamps

smooth pallor

bright against black asphalt

Its late now

no headlights on the road

no mid-night trolley hugging the curbs and

avoiding potholes, turning down

streets rough like knee scabs,

like Franklin,

past the hospital

where the devil parks

his tan Mercedes

In July Im gone

out of these city limits

out from where neon store lights

succumb to stronger shadows

and where former lovers

forget old pet names,

traveling north to Tallahassee

to have my memory wiped,

Clean

Snakebite

I.

We laid there on sheets I hadn't washed for weeks,

but you didn't know that, coiled up in them, pinstriped

whites becoming your second skin, clothes strewn along

the carpet like scales shed off the shoulder and on to the floor:

                        a loose bra strap,

                                    an open belt buckle,

                        tight blouse pulled back like curtains,

                                    a stage of  bare flesh and

                        freckle patterns,

                                     the epidermal Pleiades

                        in a peach sky

II.

You made dainty snores as

you dozed off, smacking

your lips and swishing thick

saliva, a dry mouth after a

night of beer and cigarettes,

cocooned stiff in dirty

linens and deep sleep

I felt the wisp of the ceiling fan,

a cold breeze on a nude thigh,

clenching the little corner of covers

you hadn't claimed and plotting

to steal them back, suddenly

wishing I would have left you

at the bar buzzing in the

smoke with the other flies

I thought of how much your cab

would cost in a few hours, of the awkward

goodbye with a peck of morning breath

at the door, the call the next day that

I wouldn't answer, and how callow it was to be

naked, next to you, thinking these venomous things