THAT CITY NIGHT (c)

That city night long ago,
I pulled my collar up leaning
In a vacant doorway escaping the bitter wind,
Darkened buildings gloomy from the yellow corner light.

I’d just read at St. Mark’s with the cool poets,
My stuff a mixture, mad politics, mystical murmerings.
You didn’t show, so I made up a name, like, S.I. Boy.

I was down deep in a dark funk, soul etched in troubles,
The growing pains of youth, I stared at your loft window,
A faint, ghostly light, the only light on the old block.

I’d seen you go up there with him, a well known artist,
Kissing, laughing, I felt poor, stupid, broke.
I shivered, reaching for the half pint of Irish.
Sharp, bitter, sweet, I threw it down my throat, quick,
A leap into the void’s chasm, it burned all the way down.

Stupid to come over here to see a glimpse of you.
So I turned east walking 20 blocks into the wind,
Majestic sadness flapping out behind me like a cloak.

The whiskey’d help me sleep,and tomorrow- you’d be gone
Just a headache lingering, and the faint and disappearing
Wisps of your perfume, that’d someday surface in a poem.


11/06/98 cottekill ny