Just Another Familiar Face

 His face was all over

 the TV news and the front

 page of all the local

 papers.  It was a familiar

 face to me and the answer

 to one of those trivia quizzes

 you never expect to get

 the answer to: What the hell

 were all those cops doing

 in Richute’s used car lot?

 What they were doing was

 putting the arm on this clown

 I’d been dusting off in

 a series of bar jobs for

 years.  I knew, he was no

 good and not too bright ,but

 killing your sister in law

 and leaving her wired to the

 front door handle with a coat

 hanger and leaving her on

 the block God forgot was

 beyond stupidity.  Being dead

 was bad enough but leaving her

 on Elberon Place, a block from

 where he lived, was not too bright,

 especially with a record

 like the one he had.

 When the captain said,

 “Round up all the usual

 suspects,” they didn’t have

 far to look.  

The Invisible Men

 They knock on the old guy’s

 door with a baseball bat.

 It’s like A Clockwork Orange

 in black and white.

 “Open up, like right now

 or there’s going to be big

 trouble.”

 “Go away, you’ve got no

 business being here.”

 But they do, kicking down

 the door, knocking him

 senseless and rifling all

 the cabinets and drawers,

 withdrawing his life savings.

 On the way out they kick him

 and extra few times in the

 head leaving him senseless

 in a puddle of blood.

 Across the street, in the bar

 with no name, they buy rounds

 of drinks for their friends

 and hangers on, drowning out

 the sirens with classic juke box

 rock and roll. Tipping the bartender

 twenty big ones, they hit

 the bricks around two.

 Later, when questioned, no one

 in the bar remembers seeing

 anyone matching their descriptions.

“We need to talk.”

She said, in a way that meant:

she spoke and I listened.  

I thought about how this one-sided

conversation was about to go,

wondered which transgression

she was going to harp on.  

There were so many to choose from.

As she began to speak,

the opening scenes from the black

and white move, “Night and the City”

began on the muted TV next to

where she was standing.

I watched Richard Widmark

running for his life; long shadows on

concrete and cobblestones.

Soon he’d be trying to steal a good

woman’s money but she was wise to

his ways. Hid her money elsewhere

even if lied and stole from her,

she loved him anyway.  Who could

take advantage of someone as

beautiful and as kind as Gene Tierney?

Richard Widmark could.

I wasn’t the kind of guy someone loved

that much.  

“You’re not listening to me, are you?”

“No.” I admitted.

I watched Widmark rifling through

Gene’s pocketbook. It would all be downhill

from here.

Blood Thirsty Cannibals

The cabbie who was going to

kill himself, dropped me where

Madison meets Lark downtown.

Later, I would think, he must have

been marking his declining years

by how may teeth had fallen out

and it was almost time to die.  

There were a few stories going

around about how he did it but none

of them involved an open coffin so

we’ll never ever know for sure.

I had a reading on Central upstairs,

at the Boulevard bookstore after a slow day

working the bar on a New Year’s Eve.

There was a major weird vibe just being

where I was, nearly seventy degrees outside,

in work clothes, sober and seriously

needing a drink. Didn’t matter much

where, I thought, picked a bar and

wandered in.  The mauve neon should

have been a dead giveaway but I wasn’t

thinking atmosphere, what I was thinking

was Johnny Walker Red now. Called for

a Rob Roy and stared into the face of the most

clueless person who had ever stood behind

a bar. Then I saw all of his lip licking friends

in the backbar mirror staring at me as

if I were chum on the waters. Jesus Harry

Christ, I thought, tried again.

“You’ve heard of a Manhattan, right?

Think Scotch instead of Rye, and pretend

you are making one of those with a whisper

of Dry Vermouth and lemon twist.

You know how to do a lemon twist, right?

If not, I’ll show you. Make it one of those

mini-shakers and pour it over ice and no on

gets hurt, okay? There might even be a nice

tip in it for you.”

Drinking was my avocation in those days

and I took my work seriously sort of like

a blood thirsty cannibal before the main meal.

Thought to myself, that wasn’t a half-bad

title for a poem. I had over an hour to kill

before the reading.  I could get a lot of work

done in an hour. All I needed now was

to keep the piranha at bay, some bar napkins

to write on and a pen.

The Man on the Windshield

Jumps off thruway

overpass, lands on car

doing 70, maybe, 80 m.p.h.,

goes airborne, lands on

windshield of second car,

rebounds off the soft

shoulder/verge. Lives.

Says, the whole experience

gave no meaning to phrase,

“Bad acid flashback.”

Says, it was his third suicide

attempt.  Failed. Sues everyone

involved. Loses. Walks with

a limp now. Looks like shit.