the best bender I ever tore



the day they canned me from my job waiting tables

at their prettified rat's nest of a "health conscious" Italian

joint in the shadow of the Queensboro bridge,



I carried my fired ass across 2nd Avenue to drop

a dollar bill into a homeless lady's cup. She in her purple

quilted coat and seated upon a grey plastic milk crate

smiled up at me with more kindness than I deserved.

My life has always been like this. I lit a Camel

and carried myself serpentine around the corner,



down the length of Lexington Avenue to the train station,

the late afternoon light floating like summer

down across the buildings, the colors of objects and people

shimmering like cilia, or seaweed. The forked tongue

of debauchery flicking my ear. A delicious tender

digital technicolor acid itch crawling all over me.



I rode the train to my hovel in Greenpoint

where I showered and played my guitar.

Drank four Coronas and howled at the red sky,

the night coming down.



later on a low stage in an all night place

just outside Chelsea I slew these 2 drunk chicks

and a few drunken others with every song

I had, and a few I didn't.



this green eyed dude with short dreadlocks

jumped up on stage with me for some E flat blues

till the gray dawn light sluiced in like pale water

thru the big plate glass window.



everyone was drinking as though they were immortal



then this wire-limbed Micmac girl in tight, dirty

blue jeans entered my scope. or perhaps I

entered hers. she seemed like a veteran. everyone

seemed to love her. how I wanted to fuck her.



instead we all smoked a joint outside in a doorway,

then she melted away



after a few more words

of epic drunken cameraderie

with my green eyed blues friend,



so did I too,

down into the E train



much later in the loud

bright 10 oclock

morning,

not a cloud in the sky,



I crawled out

of Greenpoint station

broke to stalk



down the butt-end

of Manhattan Ave.

with my hangover demonic,



my scowl

like finery,



and the bums all knew me.



wonder that

I still had my guitar.



(I'd lose that later,

in a future drunk March,

a week after



my birthday)