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rain drips among grieving graffiti on the outer wall,
& inside, the ghosts of forsaken lovers linger in the loneliness.
away from the criminal streets, bird flies high & wolf howls
a dirge of simpatico.

they had pretty names, the women who said they loved me. & one
who did not, but I saw the neon flash of those words when I plundered
deep into her heart. they spoke the Italian lust of sonnets & the desire
of odes. affairs of the sordid belong to the shadows.

the passion of my poems & the sorrow of my noir urged them to take
me as a lover, till they discovered that the avenging angel of romance
only leaves a woman to cry. we fade out without saying goodbye.

the furious dark is pierced by the pallid beams of the moon, projected
like an old movie; as if Bogart were still in that Paris train station,
the Paris rain falling, & Ilsa  –  gone to another man. the arcane
night breaks into a Gothic symphony: the weeping of ghosts,
the howl of a wolf.

but I am merely a drifter & a soldier. the song of myself
is written to the stormy skies of perfidy  –
and I dance for the war…


(Art: Thomas Eakins)