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.