Saturday Night

I walked horizontally on the street's
walls with V by my side, it was
a treadmill rotary phone
Rolodex turning around us,
the same homes same cracked
pavement over again same hoarse voices,
until the park and something new
because the ground
was sinking further beneath my
stumbling feet, keeping up with the
speed--

It's a return to the biblical age
and the party has spilled out to the street

Which street?
Don't ask me, I couldn't find the river

and
Tommy yells at me from across street
in matching (my) shirt and white
construction worker hat
but
I wander over and sit down beside the
gorilla on the sidewalk propped
up against building on corner
watching (seemingly) tumbling toward him
SUV,

It's Joe
sweating and tired and sweating mad

V heading back inside painted white door
upstairs to talk to the girls
tho there's girls out here
and in 51% of everywhere
glowering and scowling
at sad men with sad pockets and nothing
to give of but themselves
which is what V has got,
all of his great and beautiful self
but that isn't enough for this world
NO!

I can't take that and I never will--

So Edd comes rushing downstairs
throws a full pitcher at some stumbling
asshole punched him in the face
and theres a scene like any scene
with beer and working class
that you could have seen every wild
night in every city America when we were allowed
to live but now it's so alien and strange
and it's broken up, Edd turns back rolling
which is where and when we decide to split and head
on back up that same street,
my heart street and only street, to V's car
where we pile in and slowly lift off
leaving fresh screams and sad dripping memories
like somehow we always do--

Old Joe, new nights death and jumping

"What if I just dove off this balcony?"
He said,
"You'd be dead, " I answered.

He was standing in the doorway
drowsily, old Joe drunk, sorrowful,
lamenting, that layer of phony happiness
and smiles torn away by scotch and
beer, we were bare-chested, bastards, fuck-ups
in the summer's heat, the party in shadows behind us,

"I'd rather jump off the Whitman,"
I told him, and truthfully told him,
"Yeah," He mulled it over sloppily,
"The Franklin seems too popular,
everybody is jumping off there, you can't
just walk up on the Whitman, that's determination,
if you did it you'd have to stop traffic, even swerve
your car into both lanes and jump out,
run over the hoods of cars,
climb up to the edge and just go,
and when you're floating between the
bridge and the water, with your arms
outstretched like this, forcing all those
idiots to confront the end, mothers
holding their hands over their children's eyes,
that's when you're truly, finally free, that
moment is it, the only time it's
possible to escape this...this shit.
I'd like to walk the Appalachian Trail,"
He finished.

"And when we do finish," I figured,
"We fucking jump off the Brooklyn Bridge."

"Yeah! And we keep detailed notes, and
take our poetry with us, send it all, send
everything out the day we jump, to
publishers, media, everybody."

"Man, if we did that," I said musing
over my empty beer, watching his
dulled eyes, "We'd
be read man."

"We'd be dead," He was reeling
in this thought, the possibility.

"Yeah, but we'd be read," I repeated
and we smiled at each other through
the years and the trust and the pact,
through the meaningless nights and sounds.

Celebrate

Under the crystal blue sky
with a chair back
as loin cloth I take my
leap off the curb and into
rush hour traffic, the
cops are gone, tired of
wasting their fleeting hours
sitting at the corner
of Broad and Ritner,
I'm running to the opposite
side with a hockey stick in
hand, I'm conjuring the ghosts
of the past, the little time I've got left.

Torment at 50

Nick has a corrupted short-term memory
he'll ask you the same questions
over and over, his long term memory isn't that bad,
he kept talking to me about when we worked
at the Inquirer in the mail room (this was years ago)
we talked about it maybe 15 times,
my heart broke each time I shook his hand,
looked into his eyes, answered the same questions again,

the depression medicine was doing its job alright,
we toasted to his father (a shot of house whiskey together)
under my breath I made a dedication to him,
and his lost soul, fevered mind, unrealized dreams,
un-tethered consciousness,

I thought about it the entire night,
I think about it now with the rain pounding
in the night beyond my window, how horrible it would
be to realize how lost
and helpless we are and
how free he is from time

drinking on a mondee

Drinking coffee(black) over
tired conversation in the kitchen 6am,
my drunk wearing off and pulling me
to sleep, Whit already upstairs
hiding, which is very unlike
Walt with so many guys here and
cats normally liking attention,
I can imagine the dinosaurs outside
growling at the sun,
the high topped trees standing
against the wind, that flag reflecting
off man made surfaces, not so old
red-white-and-blue at the bears tasting our flesh on
paved sidewalks covered in rainbow silly string,
the coffee's now gone cold and
we're looking at each other probably,
for something, who knows, who knows
but we're looking anyway,
I tell a story about a gutted dog I
never saw and Joe is growling at the sun