Crack Vials
A song for the eighties
Users
use once
then useless,
Gutted,
open like a wound,
or junkies’ vein,
or treatment center doors
for rich boys with cash.
Visiting Harlem,
doing the stop and go
to cop and blow, then
drive near slo-mo
back to Jer-Z
at 55.
But users
don’t stay tourists long
and end up doing
life on the lifestyle
24/7 on the crack vial.
Law enforcement lies
alibis drugs are on the slide.
Not true, drugs revive
with more lives
than a Vampire’s wives.
Yet Government won’t legalize
just build more jails
as city after city dies
thru shootings, holdups
and drive-bys.
Burying in
low level dealers, riff raff,
or victims like school kids
every morning
seen skipping by
crack vials.
A Bar Conversation
Then what do you do?
she asked.
As little as possible
and then more
or less the same.
At what?
Hard to say even harder
to describe without
a painting.
Ooh so you’re an artist
she said, solving the mystery.
Absolutely not. I hate the smell of paint,
artistic or otherwise.
Then you…
Yes i am retired
but you look so young!
Yes, yet I’ll shoot a gun
out the window at 3 or 4 am
when streets are empty
but need watching. I’ll steal money
from vipers, pimps, or whores
if they leave their marked
cards on the table long enough.
Under a blazing full moon
I’ve turned to a werewolf more than once.
I have half a dozen pairs of women’s shoes
in my closet left by those
who dared not return. I’ve been arrested,
have a record but never sang
to the cops. I’m working on a blueprint
for my revenge against the world.
Yet still I smile and yes I’m retired.
She looked at me blankly
said excuse me, got up and left.
I ordered a new drink,
with hours to go before 3 or 4 am,
to shoot at the moon I keep missing.
To Be Found And Found Out
I have daddy issues,
she whispered
in my ear after
sitting in my lap.
Decades younger,
not yet damaged by
a world more cold-blooded
than a child killer
smiling when he sleeps.
My luck with the ladies
remained or had returned,
but of course, the price
would be paid later.
What does a blind man
do when given the
steering wheel
with a loaded
gun to his head
smeared in lipstick?
It worked for a while,
but that first night
I took her in every room,
including the bath.
I thought it would work,
she said months later.
I told her it did
’til it didn’t,
but I knew I was already
torn in half by her leaving.
Sleep’s impossible now.
Too often I say her name
with the fool’s dull whisper
questioning all, even jokes,
laughter still born as
I pound the walls with fists
’til broken like everything else.
The Devil Waits
Husband’s at work
or in the bars,
at a ball game,
or looking for stolen
cash, coming home drunk,
dangling in that precipice
of one of many acts
to commit to forms
of unique regret.
Time measuring failure
like a suit or coffin while
giving his wife moments
to consider the mail man’s
wide welcoming smile,
long looks of store clerks,
or shirtless men kicking a
ball or putting it through
a hoop with sweat’s
fingerprints all
perfect in their one
gold moment
in the sun.
Married eight years,
their chasm wide
as the circus clown’s
nightmarish grin.
As time slows
to eventual
outcomes leaving
death as a jaded
raconteur with all
its shadows of
Subterfuge, waiting
to deal with them,
flaunting that smile
they once knew,
or assumed they did
when first in love.
At The Resort
The former fashion
model left bulimic
with a taste for
coke and foreign men.
She hides behind shades
but can barely
see her future
and 25 is her past.
While the rich divorcee
who circled a prenup
with the art of blackmail
sleazy photographs
a vault won’t let breathe
asks me twice why
I don’t believe in love
you have to pay for.
But it’s the French girl,
Simone, dubious.
With a counterfeit
smile she circulates
in shady deals with
real estate rich.
Men she lives to
bankrupt and degrade
since those entertainments
are hard to come by.
At the hotel bar I feel
a chill when she says
for me she has plans.
Tonight, it’s a woman
I’ve met before in noir
films and spy magazines,
whose bed I’d call home
if it belonged to either
of us. When she leaves
it’s an escape
as she puts her wedding
ring back on and calls
the concierge for a car.
Outside darkness deepens
between street lights
and a shadowy moon.
I open a dime novel
and I’m almost settled in
between a murder
and an innocent
outcast framed by a
smoking gun…
when there’s an impatient
knock on my door.
Opened, it reveals
Simone with a smile
telling me touching herself
and Russian Roulette are games
she can’t and won’t
play alone.
Dumpster Fire Press 