Atlantic City Blues

Atlantic City Blues
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Broken wallets
and broke souls slink
down the strip near where
the bitter hearts drink,
and me another boy, mind set to flip
with broken back and quivering lip.
Earned some friends,
but lost too many
rolling my bones on the altars of
green-felt and mahogany.

I've seen grannies play
sweet pension checks away,
wrinkled brows hot with fever,
sweating out destiny and pulling the lever.
Chancy crones, all beggars
before a mechanical master
tugging it's sleeve for a quarter or less.
Discreetly, per pull it picks their pocket
to feed the angelic arch-demon of profit.
When then they finally cower,
with the loss of hope's flower.
They're cast to the winds
from the thunderstruck tower.
They fall to a boardwalk
where ghosts of giggle float free
to blend with the wood sand
and music masturbatory.

In winter's chill, the thrill
falls to nil. Fade all to white
as light yields to night, and
sunward Sin City makes plain it's plight.
On silent sidewalks,
the broken souls
bare their shoulders against shoals of cold,
fingering bones to be rolled,
FLIPPING razor chance, one palm to another
and back again. I'm their friend.
In my mind, I'm among them,
along them, aside them
I pride them and sing
my stacatto statistics
and the chants of the mystics,
seafarers and storytellers
who came away with their bodies ablaze
but their hearts intact
my avatar friends
Ginsberg and Kerouac.
Boiled out of their minds
on jive gin, milk and honey
buying the world up
without any money.
No money that buys
the shore at sunrise
or falls to bones
whose fate meets the tides.
MONEY best spent
on a heart unrent
and sealed in a soul
that submits to control
the romantic tempest which
takes them to flight
till they crash and find
they're one more
bum in the slum
scraping scum from their mind
eyes blind with cheap rum;
they become
pirates in deed and blackguards in soul,
so the bitter hearts part
and splinter the whole.

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Deep beneath the streets,
the cities roots wither.
The silvery-steam past
grows cold and condenses,
watering the young violent
seeds below with green glimmer.
The mind of the man
is not with mankind.
He's blind to all but the
pleasures he pined for
when HE walked with
the broke souls in the icy shoals
and cursed Our Lady's sick sister,
the whore Misfortune.
Progress constantly cannabalize
it's young with golden glassy eyes,
One may see the future of yesterday
rot in the wake
of these juggernaut days.
It's a sorrow, dull
and lasting to see
great ancient joys
fall, like leaves from the trees.
Gulps and gasps,
once astonished, dying rasps
and timeless wonders
rust to ruin
in their too-soon sunset.
In my dreams, more faded
photos,
I walk yet those boards
laughing beside ageless old children,
waking to weep
beside those born to never join them.

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In cities past and future
I sip a tea of sorrow.
My eyes are not blind
nor my ears deaf to tears,
but there's more to life than
living someone's favorite fears.
There are clams on the boil
and a kettle on the fire.
I've jonesed for the bones
but THIS is all I desire.
My mind's set to flip
but for now my head's up
so hand me some moonlight
        and I'll fill up your cup.
Bitter hearts and broke souls,
with all their desire,
Kerouac and Ginsberg
can all find a place by the fire.
Come drink the moonlight,
when it's time
here we'll be...
Love and terror sleep together
        in Atlantic City.