Notes on Breaking and Entering

You’d confiscated my key

so I climbed the drainpipe;

pulled pork, beets and brandy – I dined

well with the folk inside. With all that whisky

spilt down my shirt I couldn’t sit right.

I brought you wine and flowers;

your hound helped tear the trousers

from my legs. While he and I

were making friends, I found

myself chained to the radiator,

with a pair of silver bracelets

that match the drill sergeant’s

epaulettes – he was braced

against the wall, searching

for the alca-seltzer, pawing

through the kitchen drawers.

While a preacher at the faucet

claimed he was pouring holy water,

in the war room your butler

played checkers and a marching

band circled the dining table

breaking tea-cups and jesters

take the minutes of this farce.

All these itinerants were kept raving

by a the extenuations of an alleyway

medicine tradesman prescribing

alcohol for their sores. Offering

to waterboard me at no extra cost,

your lawyers billed the standard fee:

they’d smelt blood playing Double Dutch

underneath the hanging tree.

I wouldn’t’ve guessed I’d be

contested for your lionized

affections – I’d sooner be rid of you

than a pack of hungry dogs;

even with my dying cough I’d rather

roll between the stables,

with your vaudeville chicks painted

head-to-toe, bathed in laughter

and without their clothes.

Shooting from the Hip #2 (Blues Bar)

Man, I had the best time at 20

- I didn't care what anyone thought.
I asked, "You've changed since then?"
No; if I had, I'd've gone mental,
been thrown in hospital,
therapy and all that, I tell you
one thing: I fucking hate Woody Allen.

- Photograph by Sharp Noir, August 2010

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.

Jazz, Bleedin' Kohl and a Howlin' Trumpet Blast

I thought it best not to pursue

the nature and causes of my illusions

when I discovered her in the mirror

behind the spirits in a stray cat jazz bar

- one where raucous chapters,

as if written by a feverish

film director, are captured

in the midnight hours by a single

wink of Kegman Kovacs,

crooked on his stool behind

his bandit register – her wide-eyed

glare was the perfect bromide

for this saloon thick with

the accents of moral dissolution:

she’d glimpsed some idyllic

future scene and the thought

remained flushed on her cheeks.

As the creator of this ideal

enlivened with eloquent details,

excerpts from classic fiction

(encouraging second guesses

from Pulitzer marksmen,

compelling in their list-making),

this glossy idol of bourgeois

abstraction feigning realism,

I choose a road that is straight

and narrow, I don’t even need

to determine the direction

I travel – I’m not going back;

She consistently suggests movement,

accompanied by a leitmotif:

the howling blast of a trumpet,

a complex enigma coded

by a triad of valves and the bitter

freedom of a private life

released from public silence.

All this time I accept

she is not next to me

but on stage, amber candent

bulbs warming her face.

The band is her gang:

a vicious platoon enlisted

as a tragic ballast drilled by a single

ambitious woman. An artist,

my essence in my creative capacity,

I hold no monopoly on integrity,

forgetting the monologue,

remembering only the speaker

from the imbecile chaos

of the boot-heel chipped oak floor.

We for the minute are her closest

friends like a chance collection

of driftwood, our scepticism

relinquished from our malt,

for our craving to believe

is desperate and deep.

We beg for reward

like the queue for a soup kitchen

and with just as much dignity.

She offers a flash of information

ripe with sexual suggestion,

the grand spectrum

from love to anger painted

with a vast collection

of colours. This sylph

singing for us, a siren on a cliff

ready to wreck our passing ship,

bewildered by the obscure guilt

of a burgeoning, heated affair,

defending herself

from token wisdom

with a sinister wit emanating

from behind the flash of her teeth

across a twelve-bar riff,

displaying the dagger

but masking its poisoned

flavour with the hilt

In a slow section she leaves a kiss

on the gauze of her microphone,

a blood red smear of lipstick

- she came to sing for them

but she dances for me, hanging

on behind her with my guitar

slung like a weapon.

Before we began she only gave

me a key and a couple clicks

for the rhythm.

My turn, I sharpen my razor wires

on each flinching hat,

a trembling ride, a nickel

wound shake to every kick

from the ground. There’s

alleyway justice in my screams:

a cut to the face if you stray

from your station, every time

I break rank I fear ambush at Cerriglio.

I dissect your mood for the crowd

and find a tune for the words

she couldn’t place but now

lie naked on my operating table.

Bleeding kohl down her cheeks

She smiles at me, having forgotten

the people listening unaware

of the true purpose of our plot.

Single Malt / Crimson Lips

Don’t look for consistency when

asking about his identity:

he’s a cross between himself

and a stranger he has never met.

Sure feeling like a million sterling

and then some change,

the whisky in his belly

sets him in the path

of a spectral dame.

Begging for the freedom

to just pick up and leave,

by introduction he hopes

to conquer this dimensionless beast

simply born of the syllogism

of the dancefloor rhythm

and the flash of a chandelier.

Alien to mortal existence,

her skin is a wondrous tapestry

of infinite colour and complexity,

stained indelibly by a dress

that would look the height of fashion

on any other woman.

Bored of having every whim answered,

every degenerate wish granted,

she forces he pay the theft

of living in the crowded

miser’s den of private ego.

An unimaginable force keeps

this sybarite inexplicably

anchored to observable reality.

He should have been thrown out by now

but instead stands as an impertinence

to their unstated lust, tight

in the jaw, clutching an expensive single malt.

A dilettante of the vilest crime

imaginable, she tortures him

with the peculiar imagery

of crimson lips blooming

on her stony expression.

They assess each other’s

lurid intentions, painfully

aware of the suffocating

emptiness of impatience.

A Cold Reflection

A cold reflection on a mirror pavement wet with rain,

I wink my violet eye,

My collar high against the wind.

A dried out roll-up on an empty stomach;

Any comfort, as I roam the streets.

A willing conscript to sign in rhesus positive

For some fleeting belletrism,

I chase the success envy believes me to be,

Like a marionette without strings,

Drowning in this lazy river

Of tepid ink.

A heartbeat flicker like a wasp in a jar:

An alternatina teenager

In tyrannic nothing-dresses.

I court a frankenstitched friendship,

kiss her sweet-sweat neck

She somehow avoids arrest.

The laughter of sidemen from behind their instruments

As i consult the haruspex;

I suggest the motions of a wanderer;

Any disproportion of whisky could kill me,

Waiting in half-assumed stances.

Some miracle of adhesion:

I watch the shirt buttons strain across her bust.

I prefigure my hands in frustration

My guts in a twist

As trying to turn a needle inside-out.

Pin-stripes on all sides as two colts climb

Through ten paces;

I flash a bruised smile

Flip a table smashing glasses left and right.

I raise my .38, plug one through his leg,

He falls to the floor,

another in his chest,

So he knows he’s finished.