Black Coffee and Magazines

I have seen marble-eyed lyricists hide in cups of black coffee, chewing spent filters, coughing,
not a poet among them the scoundrels spit and wail on forgotten love and curse the memory of this tribe and that casting call, hollow in the chest, laughing
at the thought one could spend a lifetime counting spoons and who’d give a shit about your novel? – fingers shaking at a loaded hip-flask: elixir rye to the shaman roll-bones poking guts telling yesterday like tomorrow’s news,
appears you can’t tell the future unless you’re blind otherwise you’d catch hell with the clues, standing firing line with near-prophetic ad-men, flat cap in hand used to play Ronnie’s Swing Club balking hexes on a trumpet.

Too many buddies sewing patches on old cords; I contribute to The New Yorker every day sharing the kerb with any vagabond with a screenplay.
My kid sisters don’t know George Sempé but I’m obsessed with him, I’m positive I can do better. Young writers quit the mail-order quotations mahogany satin polish Edwardian silk finish with a happy ending I’m sick of it; the is only one god and Howard Roake is his prophet.

I pray with a guitar and a young heart into a tin speaker every night; no trains, my den crux cobwebbed ‘neath the elevated tracks – they closed the pink line so I can record my album spring loaded civic action no cash flow anyway...
Ain’t any time for you boxcar balladeers! Free ride but no train to take,
can’t lay dozing ‘neath the freight.

Sharp Noir (Part V)

Rubix reported a lingering dread

- an idiosyncrasy of this particular

model, although a noble sentiment –

filed undisclosed natural causes;

we all know what that means.

They’ll gibbet Cassis as an example

for striking pins at this level:

life isn’t all beer and skittles

when dealing decks a fatality situation.

Alone in a hotel room,

a light whisper of a night-train

flutters just above the roof,

taps enough to imply the wind

and talk of the sea it’s from.

Picking at the nightmares between

reality and dream, Cassis, half-

sitting, may become a regular

footnote stranger, dissolving tears

in alcohol to avoid making a scene.

Havoc has been wrought

on his midbrain by alternating

sedatives and stimulants.

Rolling up the tag like

a little newspaper, reining in

a bucket from a mossed well,

Noir retrieves a teabag

from Cassis' mug.

We imagine the procession:

two files like heavy curtains

breezing each other

as the mourners wobble

in their short, slow steps;

Rubix smoking because,

like most actors, she knows

not what to do with her hands.

In our darkest reflections, of love and death,

our thoughts are potent with the Colonel.