affair of rain & music

 
I walked down the steps in the pouring rain, the mean kind
that could knock a sparrow right out of the sky. when the wind
blows, it bends the rain horizontal, like artillery fire, & I take
stinging pellets in the face.

I was coming from the upstairs nightclub where I’d met her
months ago. Tommy the bartender had warned me: a kiss will
break your heart quicker than a bomber’s payload dropping on
a mighty harbor that carries soldiers & sailors on a pine box ride
from here to eternity. he mixed metaphors as well as he mixed
a whiskey sour.

we spent many good nights together then, (that woman of a gypsy
heart), nights without rain. we drank whiskey that had lived a long
time in stout oak barrels, then died parachuting out of a shot glass
as I swallowed it.

being a house of phantasmal turpitude, the club had a little orchestra
of strings melancholic & a drum of rambling thunder. the singer,
Kaiti Kink, delivered old jazz love letters written in dusted words. the
mood caressed us like a cinematic temptress when we danced.

one night as I drank alone, she (whom I do not name because of the
hurt) was on a plane bound for her city in old Poland; I knew not if she
returned to a man or an obligation. I had given her something that I
could never use again, & I figured I’d regret it in time. she carried my
heart in her bustier, close to hers, & I worried that it would not cling
to her bosom when she disrobed. although I loved her, I suppose.

the music was smooth, it was mellow, but it was just music. the rain
is just rain, & the wind blows here same as it does in Tokyo or Berlin.

all these things are just as they seem, but in my prowling for romance &
poetry, I’ve found that a woman never is…


(Art: Cindy Marler)