Ground Down Cocaine.

 

Ground down cocaine

derivative coursing through my early morning

veins, my dinner time blues and late night

saturated fat on old Jazz music

of which I cannot play a beat,

yet hear every note that the Sax man plays

in earnest down on 77th Street gun alley

where only the night before a man was killed for less

than murdering a rag time special

and looking at his killer’s broad

with a funny eye.

The late November sun catches my eye

and through the glass I take a look around the street,

up towards the bar, down towards…

well I never really paid much attention what was down there

in the dark but I guessed they all floated on some sort

of helium, induced by a drug other than dirty Bourbon;

I sip at a glass of water, heady with pain killers,

ready for another day of wanton desire

for all things spiritual and draining exclusion.

I feel the heat of the single radiator

as I gulp down the remaining sediment and chalk like

flavouring, tonight is a night for hedonism in a town

of poetry, a taste of the Hispanic girl in the offering,

a woman of sophistication and wealth

who sees me as a project,

to turn my head from the Jazz and the Blues

and who even now is coming up

in the elevator to get high with me.

 

Ian D. Hall 2017