Ground down cocaine
derivative coursing through my early morning
veins, my dinner time blues and late night
saturated fat on old Jazz music
of which I cannot play a beat,
yet hear every note that the Sax man plays
in earnest down on 77th Street gun alley
where only the night before a man was killed for less
than murdering a rag time special
and looking at his killer’s broad
with a funny eye.
The late November sun catches my eye
and through the glass I take a look around the street,
up towards the bar, down towards…
well I never really paid much attention what was down there
in the dark but I guessed they all floated on some sort
of helium, induced by a drug other than dirty Bourbon;
I sip at a glass of water, heady with pain killers,
ready for another day of wanton desire
for all things spiritual and draining exclusion.
I feel the heat of the single radiator
as I gulp down the remaining sediment and chalk like
flavouring, tonight is a night for hedonism in a town
of poetry, a taste of the Hispanic girl in the offering,
a woman of sophistication and wealth
who sees me as a project,
to turn my head from the Jazz and the Blues
and who even now is coming up
in the elevator to get high with me.
Ian D. Hall 2017