angst und schrecken
in der david quelle
these stairs are designed to murder a man
who’s had too much to drink
narrow, they wind like a medieval dungeon
to a bathroom that smells like death
upstairs where i left my wife alone
you can hear the six german men laughing
crowded around the tiny bar over their bottles of astra
and that black liquor the bartender keeps pouring out
i can still eat their cigarette smoke in the air down here
fourteen years off of those things
and i still think about cigarettes every day
think about them more than love or my own mortality
i wonder what i’m doing here clasping the sweating wall
in a german dive bar where i don’t belong
four thousand miles away from brooklyn problems
beers deep into an early hamburg afternoon
i’ve understood next to nothing that anyone has said to me
today
i’ve done nothing to make myself heard
the light from the bottom of the stairs
looks like an oubliette
and i’m tired of trying to make this world my own
if i ever make it back up those steps
i think i’ll grab one of those german’s cigarettes
smoke it until i’m sweating and sick
like the first time i ever had one of those things
ask those laughing bastards
what their german word is for sadness or loss.
and......because Fleet Week is starting here in NYC:
fleet week
the three of them
were sitting at the end of the bar
in their starched white uniforms
like returning heroes
like princes of new york
christ, they all looked like sunburnt popeyes
drunk and liberated from their duty
waiting to go back aboard their ship
to shower with each other again
we were drinking nearby
drunk and liberated from our jobs
waiting to back to our apartment
to shower with each other again
when one of the little soldier boys asked me
is that you’re wife?
as the other two in their starched whites
just kept looking around
waiting for another drunk patriot to buy them
a congratulatory drink
for their volunteer service
or for someone to pat them on the back
and say, hell of a job, soldier
like conquering titans
like golden gods
only we’d been watching clowns like these
harass women all week in the city
he said to me, they must be fun
he started laughing
he put his hands toward his breasts
like he was holding two balloons
when the other two
saw what their sailor friend was doing
they tried putting his hands down
but then he fell off of his stool anyway
into a puddle of stale beer
and popcorn kernels
another brave soldier gone down
protecting my freedom.
05.23.14/05.20.15
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