New York Poem by Alice St Clair

New York Poem

I like to think of your cobbled streets, and the
way Spring sprayed its hopeful light upon them.
All freedom and future and corners built for getting it wrong.
A playground for some punked up posh kids to hustle their dreams, 
to feed the hook into the mouth of hope,
see what it dragged back in. 
Stamp all over the rituals of the folk back home, 
flash their bare chests in Union square
spread jam upon their buttery faces.
To sip drinks on stoops and skate downtown, sit
quiet in tenement blocks with rocking chairs left
by old men who fled the maddening city. Hop
from one hip place to the next till the pounding clock tells your heart 
to slow down.
Till the pounding heart of the night tells your
inner moon to start to set.
To start to pipe down- and hide behind the
wistful cloud.
I think of you now like a lost lover. 
My heart yearning for your fuel, for your fire, for
your bare faced upfront fucked up adrenaline.
Cancel out the hard times cancel out the lonely
lost hard times. The time the taxi shut its doors
upon your pretty wrist and left you scarred and
wailing on the bitter ground. The day the
woman wrapped her fist upon the door to find
you drugged up, smacked out, on your dearest
mothers’ birthday. Then called me to tell me and
I mourned your death on that same old cobbled
mess. Poured gin into my mouth and watched
the black of my make up smudge its way into my
pure unmarked skin.
I got a job on that cobbled street. Then someone
robbed the shop and I lost it.