Almost two years later...picking up the pieces

I love a cigarette.

I have smoked them in cars, on windowsills, on chairs,
off chairs, in houses, out of doors, after fighting,

after making love,


during arguments, first thing in the morning, after eating
a delicious dish, after being ridden and put away wet.

Breathe in, melt the anguish. Breathe out, remember. The smoke curls
and writhes in the air and you remember every nuance of the way it was.
How it felt so...gut wrenchingly perfect.

---

She was a blonde ball of combustible fire. The first time I saw her
I claimed her.
The next in a long line

of nexts. She had a way son. Bad as sin, hard as nails,
with a paradoxical softness of sheer linen.

Those eyes. Spear you like a marlin in deep waters. She had it,
that thing that drives men wild like animals. A ring on the finger?
I paid no mind, and in the end I got what was coming to me.

Got me all the way to New York City, Brooklyn bound. Like the two
train racing through 34th, past 14th street into the bourough I
began to call
home.
Sweet sanctuary, on the corner of Court and Schermerhorn
I bled for that little girl.

"Bright lights, big city" hooks in my atrium I was a goner.

When it started we did it up against the wall with bites and scratches.
When it ended we did it like an old married couple, bored with life, and each
other.

I used to get drunk in the West Village and blend into the endless cast of
characters.
Shaking and rocking on our heels, pounding the pavement like poets.Gin-soaked and beer-bred we had the swagger, know what I'm saying?

Alice, my Alice.
His Alice.
And his Alice.

Little did I know.

One time I let another little blonde girl take me home.
Told me, "You have a face for tv."

Marlin caught.

We went home and I saw her in the Brooklyn moonlight. All silouhette
and soft.

The next day the original gangster dropped me like a bad habit.

Sent me packing, still drunk, sobbing, begging.
No idea that I had done a thing; didn't care.

-----

She used to dress up and tell me it was for her.
I'm sure it was for a him.
I found the condom wrappers in the trash that day
pointing and laughing and kicking my ass.

Slut. Whore. These were the words du jour.
I wept. Hard. Hard weeping, like a child.

They don't teach you about these things, they don't prepare you.
Pits of despair were never mentioned in preparatory.

So here I am. Rain falling, cat crouching, heart healing
slower than grass will grow.

Feel bad for me?