Blues for an Old Tattoo
The streets are full of syringes and daggers.
The plastic factories smog reddens the sky.
The dogs are barking at the taxi-cabs in front of the last illuminated shop windows.
There’s no blues or poetry in the late night bars.
Here the wounds are not to be cured, but paid in whisky and blood.
And even if I hear a saxophone tune from the upper floor cinema
I do not have the strength to stop and listen.
Its sound crumbles like an old tattoo on the wrinkled skin.
People believe in zodiac, reincarnation, self-healing of the body
and it seems to me so very sad.
I’m waiting for the day when we shall pray to advertising posters.
When angels from the churches’ walls, emaciated, with their feathers burnt by starvation
will hold machine-guns in their hands instead of divine crosses.
We shall all get together at the University Square
and sing: Shine a light on me.
Let the midnight special shine a light on me.
I smoked marijuana with a honey girl from Rio
and we both were talking about sex
in languages not to be understood by the other.
I tried to commit suicide in a good deal of ways
but nothing really worked out.
I guess somebody just gave me a misleading address.
However, the nights are not for mavericks here
and my shoes are still heavier than my feelings.
No time for big decisions.
No time for pendency.
And no wonder that my words might sound tragic
when I’d do all way out for a saw buck.
I draw up on one side of the road,
light another toke & say to myself:
“Afterwards, what in the world do you know about politics, pussy or poetry –
you, with your freakish hat and shabby clothes, pray tell?”
SULFUR 