I used to be a party person, honest
One
She did a head trip on herself,
That neon-red-headed punk rocker
Pretending everything was all right,
The punk movement already dying
The way disco did,
She, the 1980s Scarlet O’Hara,
Still clinging to the glorious past
As new wave smoldered around her
Cocaine baking the back of her brain
She sitting through a hip party straight
For the first time since she could remember
Watching lines vanish from the table top
Like sand from the top of an hour glass
Each inch of powder as valuable a gold,
1989 instead of 1849
yet with plenty of fools in this rush, too.
She watching each face
Bending over the dusty trail,
She squinting as they squinted,
Her gaze measuring each inch
As if she knew when each took too much,
She and me the only mere mortals
In a room suddenly filled with supermen
She thinking of those times
When she had superpowers, too,
Waking in the morning,
Remembering nothing,
But the vague purple haze
And the sense of despair.
Two
Because I never knew I looked for you
Lip to bleeding lip
Eye to blackened eye
I wanted a nipple to suck dry
And hunted for you,
Two of us, worn weary
From searching the jet set
Surrealistic landscape
For something real
Our lives like shredded paper
From which we have made
Papier-mâché
Keeping things together
With hope and paste.
You with a photograph later
Scotch Taped to your dresser mirror
just another hunted criminal
wanted for something,
but without reward
Three
You could hear the nails
Splitting wood above my head
Like the tap, tap, tap of a woodpecker
Or the last gasp of the undertaker
Sealing my coffin.
The club set treating me as
I was already dead,
Too old to appreciate
this generation’s hip
Nobody talks to me at the bar
Except the bartender asking
If I wanted “another,”
He needing me to make up the volume
My lack of date cost him.
Knowing he wouldn’t get the tip
He would if I knew I was going to get laid,
The tapping of the juke box music
Making me ache,
No rolling stones or beatles,
No language I could understand
Tap, tap, tapping
Inside my mind.
Four
I’m looking for life with a built in eraser,
So I can rub out all the mistakes I’ve made,
My days written in graphite rather than ink,
Most pages too faded to read.
I have more new beginnings than Genesis,
Rarely getting past the point of Cain
Before I have to start over,
Each romance tangled with barbed wire
And words of wisdom I never accept,
And wounds running too deep
To ever heal completely.
Five
It was an 8 by 16 inch
Speck of dust
Stuffed between the stars
Along Hollywood Boulevard,
A window stuffed
Sweet dreams
Scantily dressed women
Boys like me ache for in
The men’s magazine,
Not quite stark naked,
Nor without purpose
Advertising scant wares
our girls would never
consent to put on
or look as good in if they did,
me, dreaming of that place
and those dolls
even drifting into sleep at night
as if I was the playboy strolling
sunset strip,
clutching the mannequin beside me
over every
stumbling step
six
I dressed up for you in my favorite sweater
Emerging from my morning shower
At the last moment, waiting, still cool
For you to arrive
Us strangers after years of silence
Substitute faces in the night
Make-do lovers holding the place in me
I always reserved for you.
Though deep down I never forgave you
For letting me go,
That fast lane insanity leading you to other men
You thought might love your more
Than I ever could,
Now after so many years
The pebbles clack again in my chest for you,
Making me ache in a way I haven’t since your going
As if seeing you I hoped for a rock slide
That would keep you from ever
Leaving again.
Seven
His voice sounded like a crow’s,
Cawing each plea for change
As he made his way along Main Street
His gray and wrinkled face
Painted with the pain of survival,
Cold nights sleeping near
A laundry’s street-side exhaust
His days stumbling over curbs
In a stagger suited strangers
Blamed on booze,
The weariness of walking
Making his block
A Way of the Cross
Kind people tossing him coins
Store keepers bribing him
With donuts and coffee
For him to beg elsewhere
He rarely complaining
Though he routinely tells
His tale of woes designed
To squeeze a little more from each sucker,
His laughing as thin as crying,
His grimace of a smile
Telling the real story
Of one time importance
We may never know.
Eight
For years I thought
Sex was overrated
People didn’t screw around
Nearly as much as they said,
Media making mountains
Out of mole hills
To which Mohammed
Would never come
I saw myself as saint
Bearing my cross of self restraint
Aching the lusting souls I saw
Plucking roses at the bar
None fearful of being pricked
By the thorns.
But I ached, too,
For the scent I could not smell,
And no midlevel torture
Could have felt so cruel
As those moments of torment
In clubs when I posted watch
On a bar stood
Watching the lost parade go by
I imagined all I might do
With any number of the ladies I saw
Me living the Jimmy Carter nightmare,
So intensely full of passing
I shook,
So full of envy I imagined every man’s chin
Stained with the juice of forbidden fruit
But mine.
Yet I told myself
All other men were just like me
Sex a mere illusion
And the race prospered by some
Mysterious process of pod seeds
Falling out of our ears or eyes
I kept thinking love
Would save me
A life preserver
Tossed out to me even
As I sank for the last time,
Over my head in lust
And lack of courage
But love was not enough,
And like Mohammed,
It came too late.
Nine
You left me with
Pigeons and squirrels
In River Side Park
Cold wind and warm sun
Carving out the details of my day
Monday afternoon
Bringing me back in time
To the early days
When our world was created
Me, you and a bridge
Across a river named
For a man who used
The river for retreat
We locked into a weekly ritual
Of advance and withdrawal,
Me, braving the mists of Avalon
To recover you for
A few brief days
Hours squandered on
The concept of love
Each moment squashed for all
We might get out of it.
Ten
The crimson light
Spills into my room
Like red water into a dented metal bowl
Spilling over the ragged, rusted edges
Of my life as if to drown me.
The warmth on my cheek
Wakes me before the brightness does
A probing finger searching out each scar
Left over from my dreaming.
I can hardly breathe
My room remembers the nightmares
Better than I do
Like a record keeper marking out
That hazy landscape
With unintended landmarks,
A sock left here,
A burger wrapper there,
The cobwebs of an unused life
Decorating waking reality
I am intimidated by it all,
Rearrange the artist’s work
To put each into shapes I can recognize,
Me, blinking blindly against the light,
Wondering the whole time
What the neighbors think
When they see me so exposed.
I close eyes,
Preferring dreamscape to reality.