FAREWELL, THE LADY SAID


FAREWELL, THE LADY SAID


"Look it's my fucking job!"

"You can say that again!"

We fly down
the neon street
neither of us really
chasing the other

"I don't need you to fucking tell me how to run my fucking life!"

We curse as righteously as
a pair of apostate angels
so long ago abandoned by
a more tasteful Heaven

that we must forever act out
the sacred drama of our fall
through the torments of
those poor and lonely souls

passing into Hell
unnoticed by angels
ignored by the least of demons
forgotten even by sin

"I'm not telling you
I mean I never want to
tell anyone what to do"

I stumble over my words
like a drunk waking up
to the blinding sun
in his face

"it's just in you Cherisse
it's the Goddess inside you
and inside me and inside
this city's broken-down heart
busting us down the street like
a couple of speed freaks to
try and tell you don't end up
breaking yours too!"

One of us stops
in our tracks
I forget who

"Johnny don't give me your weird occult shit"

My friend
and she must still
be my friend because
we glare at one another
like scared rats

speaks in that
practical tongue
of worn out people
who have worn out
their dreams

Poetry
even very bad Baby Pagan
Post Sixties California
Ex-Flower Child Beach Bum
poetry
means very little
to the cruisers on
the Boulevard of
Cheap Pickup Lines

My voice slows to
match the November ice
chiming in my lungs

"Dammit Cherisse
I'm not trying to preach
I hate preachers for
peddling their guilt trips
but you are a woman and
your body is your temple
not everybody's rented sewer"

Looking sort of like
a pissed off Barbie doll
dressed by a psychotic
eleven year old girl

her clothes twisted wrong
from all the running
two buttons popped from
her polyester minidress

a sheer black stocking
sagging down one pale leg
locks of hair bunched out
from the side of her face
in a frozen moment of wind

she starts to
talk very quickly

"I don't want to be a temple I don't even want to be a body I
just want to disappear but I can't so I have to go now Johnny
I love your words I love you but I have to go now and come back
tonight with enough money to keep Jimbo happy because if I don't
he'll hit me or leave me and I'll be alone again and I'll die"

In the movies
this is where the hero
softens his echoing baritone
brings forth words of warmth
a reassuring embrace and
a slow blues piano score

"Someday that pimp of yours
is going to fucking kill you
and I don't want to be around
when it fucking happens!"

But not me
I'm just some damn
soft-headed fool
too cheap to play
her john

"Then fucking don't!"

Silence

The rats scuttle off
to separate holes
the cats turn away
for easier pickings
the evening breeze
sweeps the crumbs away
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