City of the Red Night
He came from some place
so far away and unknowable
there wasn't a word
invented yet to describe it.
He spoke of a city of
unnatural red nights
and impossible vivid days
with a look so fervent,
so distracted and sincere,
there was no sense in
calling his bluff on
the odd chance
his fantasies might just
turn out to be real
Dutch
“The name is Dutch,” he sd.,
“like the famous hood, Dutch
Schultz.”
And he looked it.
Had more miles on him
than a Hollywood racetrack,
more scar tissue than a
heavyweight punching bag
and could not carry in
a conversation that went
beyond the three basic B's:
Broads, Booze and Bread.
Sd. to the barkeep,
“Keep the rotgut
coming until I tell
you to stop.”
Didn't need to show
his polished set of
matching brass knuckles
or an in-perfect-working-
order side arm to reinforce
his point. He didn't
even need a wad
of cash big enough
to choke the proverbial
horse to get his way.
Some things are just so
self-evident you’re better
off not asking too many
questions or expecting
any answers.
nobody gave him
a ghost of a chance
on the street
wandering around
in the outer limits
of homemade acid,
purple haze, plugged
into some interstellar
music only he could hear,
volume turned so loud
his ear drums were on
some special reverb trip
so messed up you'd swear
they were about to bleed.
The Job
When they referred to
what they were doing
they called it, The Job,
as if taking stuff from
people was an avocation,
a calling, even when
the only words they
would hear after one
of their nights out looking
for work, if they heard
anything at all, would be:
Stop Thief.
My Education
began on the wrong side
of an athletic sock weighed
down by ball bearings,
then moved on to
other subjects:
lead lined truncheons,
filed, pointed brass knuckles,
hair trigger switch blades,
and a snub nosed 45.
Inside, learning was
a new kind of Basic Shop:
how to make a shiv
out of anything that
could be shaped into
a point.
Wild Boys
They were dead enders,
karma crazies, bereft of reason
wearing the soiled rags
of the damned,
they'd taken hostage
and defiled for fun
eschewing love and money
for cheap thrills and kicks,
a cheap fix, on a one way
dead end street they
were waking up on,
one after another heating
skag cut with rat poison,
a single needle plucked
from the arm of a fatally
diseased comrade
of the doomed,
spirits so low their crash
site was a main line
direct to the high-
way to hell.
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