kagablog

I do my work in the sleazy bars.
I observe the decay.
I make notes in my compact book.
The pages are unlined.
I’m waiting for a melody that will sail into my head
and take me away from this ghetto.

Molly behind the bar is holding back her tears.
Charlene’s out in the tables, she’s been there for years.
There’s a neon sign opposite me that says “magic”,
right now I’m not sure what that means.
Molly leans over the greasy bar counter and asks me, “Are you a baby?”
She might be right.
I should learn a new language,
that would be the best way to escape me.

Outside on the pavement a man with one leg scrapes a cigarette up from the gutter.
I watch him looking up at the moon but she pretends she can’t see him.
Now Molly behind the bar is on her thirteenth cigarette.
All of these working girls are dying so very slowly.
Fading from glory.
And everything I write tonight is merely a ruse
to deafen the blues
that you left
when you left me.

Molly behind the bar lights up cigarette fourteen,
glances at me and she smiles
but the look in her eyes gives it away, she’s slowly dying.
I wonder if she sees that same look in mine.
Well whatever, I’m sitting here in Saul’s Burger Saloon
quietly killing this beer.
Soon I’ll kill another.
That might help me forget that you left me.

And I still don’t know why you left.

The old Black Hawk booked the
Best jazz musicians of its day
Getz, Mulligan, Diz
To name just a few

I went there but twice
Once with the poet
Jack Micheline
Once with a young
Latin girl
To see Miles Davis
Blow his magic
Forced to sit in the
Teenage section
Because she was only
17
Sipping on a coke
High on the high note
Smoke curling around the
Room in long lingering
Lazy circles
Sweet sax
Smooth slow gin tenor
My hand on warm thigh
Feeling high feeling cool
Be-bop rhythms
Dancing inside my soul

She used to wake me up.
“What’s wrong?”
“I thought you were dead.”

Ten years later she called up:
“You were my great love.
I used to watch you sleeping.
I loved you so much it hurt.
What happened to us?”

It was devastating hearing her voice.
I was irritated. Felt no emotion.
Nothing.
Just wanted her to get off the line.

You told me that you’d sleep
with any man
Kind enough
to ask

You said your lover
didn’t know this
Neither did your
husband

You invited me round for a meal
Your husband cooked
for the three of us

After dinner you took me out for a doodle
While he stayed home and did the dishes

It must have been a couple of weeks later
I saw your face on a billboard
Yours was this season’s look

i left a message
“congratulations”
You never responded

he’s the man who went to the beach
With ear plugs on
To drown out
the sight
of the
sea

you came round to say goodbye
on a day perfect for leave-taking:
heavy grey skies drizzled dolefully,
even though it was the beginning of spring

we sat in a small café
and I watched the trees crying outside
the kitchen was out of milk,
so I took my whisky black with a shot of coffee

you brought me some keepsakes:
a chopping board you’d made,
and a duffel coat to keep me warm,
and all your CDs, for safekeeping
(and an excuse to return some day)

we held hands across the table;
your hand was rough and warm and familiar
your mouth moved, but all I heard was the background music:
david gray singing ‘say hello, wave goodbye’
it was ironic, clichéd; another time I might have laughed
but your eyes were wet
and I brushed something from my cheek
when the weight on my chest became too great,
I said I had to get back to work

we walked in the rain;
you carried the bag heavy with keepsakes
that you hoped you could make amends with
and knew you couldn’t
my hand slipped into your jacket pocket
I said I’m not angry
you said you’d come for me one day
and take me far away
but you’d said that before
and we both knew it

When I used to read a lot
I thought I never read enough
Now I hardly read at all
I think I read too much

Six months after the compliment was invested
The repercussions of that compliment
Were felt all night in bed
You played me all your CD’s
And every one of them was hip
You were reading this season’s magazines
They were all piled up in stacks
I got a finger jammed inside your ass
You made me put a condom on
When all the thrashing had stopped
I dreamed about another woman
One that I loved

the whole damn thing was bullshit
everybody in the bar
wanting numbing
what a disaster
and the applause
thereafter
our father
who art un-
playable
out of order
your name
unsayable
random notes that scared me
as much as the empty
spaces that filled the
so-called communications
between the adults
yes,
summertime was easy
except for the
bleeding

“she was plain stupid so i got real horny…
she didn’t have a sandwich toaster…
when she took off her top she was covered in hair…
she told me she was an angel of invulnerability…
she pigeon-holed me as a rooibos-drinker, poured honey and lemon on my artificial paradise…
she was going to run my business from the internet…
she was a conceptual art addict, played a tiny plastic toy trumpet with her vagina…
eventually we drifted apart…
these days she’s working as a waitress at the Ant…
still calls herself an actress although she never got a part in anything except the prelude to her own funeral.”