Journal of Heroin Love Songs

Thank you JACk hENRY for starting up one of my two favorite online Journals again (the other is Jack Marlowe's Gutter Eloquence, referenced in my previous post), the Journal of Heroin Love Songs and for choosing three of mine to publish first.

This is the link...http://heroinlovesongs1.wordpress.com/2011/03/25/puma-perl/

The first one is dedicated to my German Friend, Golde...appropriately named Hot German Chick!

Hot German Chick

Happy umbrellas cover street endings
on Broome and we make more fun
more fun more fun, stand naked
on deserted streets, I will change
the sheets when I return and you
will make more fun, more fun

Not entirely his or mine, lies
uncover truth on broken beds,
the couch is fully dressed
I wear pillowcases, you’re a peek
a boo girl, crazy genius him, you say,
more fun make, more fun more fun


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Dedicated Dope Fiends
Before technology,
there were no cell phones

Hell,
we didn’t even have land lines
except for times of great scores
or unusual industriousness

They never lasted
and eventually wires
were torn out of walls,
used to unclog works
copper sold for pennies

Candles lit half empty
stairwells, climbed six flights
or waited for buckets
to drop before cries
of bajando hit stale air

One guy sat on an easy chair,
glassine bags stashed
between bricks

Sometimes a hand
came up
from a broken toilet

On Second Street.
we climbed through holes
in abandoned buildings

Property values
no longer allow space
for zombies or welfare

NYU grads pay thousands,
live in rooms haunted
by dope fiend eyes, shared
needles, OD’s, dead junkies
saved by their partners,
stories of lifeless bodies
tossed from windows
highly exaggerated

I was there for 20 years,
even I would have noticed

Only passion replaces drugs.

Everything else
is just another dead-end
choice.


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Death by F Train
I’ve heard that on a near daily basis
somebody commits suicide
by jumping beneath an F train.

Always, an F train.

The heat index is 107,
my hair is frizzy, and I wonder
if today might be my turn
to play Death by F train.

I am talked out of it.
It would cause subway havoc,
I’m told, endless circulatory re-routing;
people would not reach the library;
a man might kill his wife because
he promised he would if she was late
just one more time.

It would all be my fault.
Again.

I guess I’ll get through another day,
body parts intact, mind scrambled,
like yesterday’s Church Avenue