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.
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.
“I wanna be a green-eyed popsmith
Loved by a twenty-first century fox,
Queue as ammunition for urban myth –
Poets never wanted to stop the clocks,”
Said the miraculously fabricated blonde,
Aligning the scan of her garter belt;
With the spartan regimen of a dedicated bard,
She melds exclusively with bonafides.
Authors’ tweeds and philistine Hollywoods
Write cochlear rhythms and reels of rhyme
For mere craftsmen, who’ve sung their songs a million times.
Panting for screen tests, frenzied by Mad Ave. hype,
Centrefolds flock the lobby – tell Godot I’ll get back to ‘im
– For a new treatment cut with a stylish Valium,
Hoping they’ve gotta pair to script a million shorts.
Tell me when his olifactory compass finds north.
“Dance like an organ grinder’s monkey,
You whiskey-soaked troubadour.
Crawl the King’s Fucking Road Darling,
Nobody wears hearts on their sleeves any more.”
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.
