In my first life,
in the milky bar light
I lay my head on the wood
and looked at the little Budweiser horses that pulled the dusty wagon
around and around
how many thousands of times they’d gone through their paces
around the clock in bar time
hypnotizing the drunks on their stools
I was one of them for a while
holding on to the cigarette-stinking wood paneling
hoisting myself up stairs to a cold street
so many bars -
dark basement bars, New York bars
comforting,
the low light like dreamtime
my companion one whom I could never abide by in the daylight.

Memory sits on my shoulder and tells me
stories of the bars with sawdust and peanut shells
on their plank floors
the weeping done in bathroom stalls,
the conspiring at the corner table
To think of the times that were swallowed
but could never stop the thirst,
thirsty until even the fondest faded

that helpless moon
still hangs like a pale ornament,
the sky hasn’t moved
we are stopped dead in bar time
leaning our elbows on the cool, slick wood
always hearing the click of our cowboy heels on
2 am summer night New York pavement
when we moved from bar to bar
to the music of liquid and ice
loving the dark arms of a barroom embrace.

For Victor Noir

You own this city in my heart
stippled by early light
after rain,
the awning of the sky over buildings that rise
like stairs to some other city -
into the mottled blue/grey above, clouds like
sickly angels, beseeching;
you own the wet, black street,
the pale streetlight.

When you lie down and feel the earth turn,
Victor,
your lips are sealed
this foolish time of dawn, painted the color of wrought iron,
the ghost in your ribs leaving you -
when you lie down on the broken stone
to close your eyes the last time
hat in hand,
Victor,
night has come.

Poetry Magazine