Beneath the smoke-hung incandescence
falling from a grimy shade
of ill-set cracked and yellowed plastic
random shapes my life is played.
My paramour, a half-bred beauty,
native ash and Malay teak,
has hand-carved grip, a well-turned shaft
that’s leather-tipped, all tapered sleek.
Alone with her these stagnant years
I’ve dwelled amid the felted slate
and dangling chalk-cubes, hollow-worn,
with soiled soul and doubtful fate.
Brash tribes of street-punks, flashing lean
from dirty jeans, still fill my door.
I eye them in their cocksure swagger
silent, stroking blind my whore
with habile, tuned and talcumed fingers,
left palm stained sardonic green,
and then proceed to pluck their feathers,
chill their hearts, and crush their spleen.
These Godless skills I bought with blood,
they trap me cold in solitude,
incarcerate my very life-force
yearning for a free-man’s mood,
for ordinary intellect and
merely average touch. I choke through
fear with hope that soon I’ll rack up
for a man of finer stroke who,
strong of hand but weak of heart,
will outshoot this repentant son,
and magnetize these dismal pockets,
beating me in dead-straight run,
to claim as spoils my wooden mistress,
trophied rust and dream-soaked bed,
for then would this damned vile existence
foul itself round him instead.
Beneath the smoke-hung incandescence
falling from a grimy shade
my ill-set, cracked and yellowed plastic
tandem days toward death parade.
(I wrote this at age 18, so full of myself and flush with the gritty sordid performances by Paul Newman and Jackie Gleason in “The Hustler.” It was my first published poem.)
Poesy plus Polemics 