It doesn’t have to be this way, baby.

Good men do not have to die like dogs.

If it turns out they do,
then let’s make sure the party we throw
tonight scares all twenty-seven members
of the wild bunch into coming home from the city.

Alive and with youth still running through the marrow
in their knees and shoulders.

Dig it?
Dig it.
Like it.
Love it.
Talk about it.

Or don’t.
We’re going to be as constant as a steady voice
telling us to be wary of wolves with northern stars in their eyes.

We’re going to borrow six fast cars,
and we’re not going to say we’re sorry,
for what might happen to five of them.

The tab has been paid.
Lucky we had rich fantasy to burn last week.
We wore eye patches,
big, obnoxious, fake mustaches,
and that fat judge was none the wiser.

Bloggers,
old fools with trucks full of camera equipment,
kids who keep a King Vidor film school
in their nice, clean jackets.

They have footage of you taking my breath away.
with that kiss that went down as the bus fly over our heads,
performed a perfect 360 degree turn in mid-air

I saw the sleeping faces inside,
and I would have wept with disbelief and frustration,
if you hadn’t locked an arm around mine
and taken my attention with soft singing for a bright,
empty parking lot.

Our friends are waiting for us.
And the way nothing makes sense these days,
it might be that we get there before they do.

Maybe, we’re both as mad as the instructions
for those toys my deeply guilty Uncle
brought back from Japan in 1989.

Or was that something that happened to someone else?

I’m nuts. I’m not dangerous,
but I’m never going to put my stalker psychiatrists
(Call them the Gang of Fourteen,
or the House of Saints) to sleep with my stories.

I’ll keep the clothes,
settle my soul
and write my own damn book.

I’ll hold your face at five a.m.
I’ll grab that youngster before he jumps in front of the train.

Someone told me I might lose my life in Korea Town,
but I just don’t have a desire to believe that.

Summer has a temper,
but it’s got enough sense
to stay the hell from me right now.

Or are you just making it seem like that?

12/01/2011

Posted on 12/01/2011
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