Park Avenue South - Thomas Sadoski

I drove past a certain building
that I know from long ago
where there was a certain second floor balcony
that looked over a cheap curry house,
and where I dreamt and smoked and fucked;
and around the corner, a perfect brazz,
where I ate real French
when I somehow saved enough money;
and then a sticky, humming Irish boozer
where I daily drank cheaply
and met a certain Wandering Tony--
we were both too skinny then but thought
ourselves not tattooed enough for proper junkies--
sometimes we would toast richly
and talk about Little Johnny Jewel,
how we’re all just scratching the surface;
and Lanegan the Wolf,
and his black spoon prisonbreak poetry
that growled with us from Tophet to free;
and Fairytale Shane,
who haunted us with tombs, love and rum,
and Shannon and My Lai and Siam;
and then we’d parse and ponder
a certain maybe-murderous Mary,
the cruel lash of guilt and our sneering
and world-vexing empathy for her;
and we’d gulp and say great world-weary wise
(but silly bullshit) things like:
“Good whiskey, like good life, takes you
long into the night and far past sensibility!” or
“Hearts and minds are for losing and breaking!” or
“The night belongs to the day it follows!”;
and then I woke up one damned June
and now I know that the balcony is gone,
a raw black gash in the city;
as is the holy brazz,
a consecrated ground forsaken, forgotten;
Johnny, he couldn’t tell a vision once Hell had flown;
Mary is long dead, cursed by but a few,
died on an island alone;
Lanegan and Shane just slipped and wilted away
in pale fates unbecoming saviors and poets;
dear Tony blew out his own light,
and in doing bloodlet the world
from Capes Cod to Cà Mau;
and I can’t drink anymore
because if I do I’ll die lonelier than this;
but that bar still stands, see,
because people don’t hold on
to rutty second floor balconies--
even though they should--
and they run sanctums into the ground--
even when they shouldn’t--
and all things die, even giants,
even wolves, even fairytales;
but a place to drown it all away,
a place for the fast mend and forget,
no we hold onto that with the scared mother’s grip
and then like that Once Was Tony,
with a tatterdemalion heart,
run—closed-eyed-fleeing--
from the snake’s rattle right into its fangs;
all those blocks stained with my youth--
I now watch passing by in this Taxi blur--
dusty with crush and grind, oh I shiver;
it’s all, all haunted.