A dance before New York

Whores hailing wide eyes on Twenty Seventh
With lepers and lovelies brawling under skin.
Stray dogs running through my veins
Crying for porterhouse bones and a bitch.
Seconds wrapped in electric morphine
Slipping away like a stolen cigarette burning
Off into the darkness of a jail cell.
Like Thunderbird and phlegm
Draining down a beggar's throat.
Tarantella rhythms stripped from a gypsy's soul.
Clandestine whispers dangling in our beery breath
Like a dead man hanging on a bough.
The corpse screams, though, I swear.
Stardust sprinkling on the window like some jazz
Drummer's brush on snare with Van Morrison
Scatting with angels of blue on the wireless.
The sweet and bitter twisting in my groin
Till the white core of the night burns through,
The fever fusing the vitalities within.
All that midnight staggering from street lamp
To street lamp just burnt out memories
Of pedestrian loving under a jinxed moon.
Tonight your eyes are all, a rebel shine,
The ballroom where I dance, loins throbbing
Sweaty and red with jackal blood.
Manhattan unbridled. A mean jack on the docks
Tearing ropes off a dream. My lips moist
With brandy and beckoning your body
For one last ride down the scar on your belly.
Your wet thighs against mine grinding
All the sadness out of the city.
Those moments inside when I am the kill
Bound for the bright lights of St. Elmo's fire.