A Shot of Big City Blues

I need a shot of big city blues
as I jones for your concrete garden of oppressive heat and stench,
of tangible rot and decay – of decadence and death
Your two-bit dives smell of stale beer
deep-fried in body odor of cigarette,
You, you claustrophobic choke of elbows and assholes
…you gimme no air…no air…’til I can breathe no longer
Mercury vapor skyscraper skyline and the stories you could tell
ah, how many jumps and all the more fakers you must have seen
As junkies step around snakes towards shooting gallery alley
filled with hypodermic syringes and twice used condoms
…cardboard box house and Spam can drinking cup
…soup kitchen throw away
Ah, big city, you stifle my every last thought of civility
and screw my brain down tight
‘til right is wrong and left is right

My sweaty skin layered in exhaust grime
…pores plugged by the touch of a thousand dirty fingers
and the money of suit and tie bullshit peddlers and pond carp
Pretentious business pricks smoking sweet and pungent cigar terds
living an imminence front in frosted hair gel of glue
”Yeah, shove that Lexus in my face metro-sex dude”
While down in whisky vomit alley lays a penniless
nameless mendicant soul
…ah, big city

Pussy-book storefront blackout windows block
a fistful of quarters and cock while a hunger within
moans, craving and jacking, jacking and dreaming
Sign says “Nude Token Girl within”… ah but she,
with slice of flab hanging over womb corridor
…. appendix scar and scummy tits drooping
making rounds for more, more, more
on slippery cum slick floor shot through hole in door
…. a slip and fall jism lawsuit waiting to be,
While the whores work the corner of 22nd and Vine
for disease and a dollar
a pimp’s Mercedes spins spokes of gold bling
rap rap hip hop crap
fuckin’ ebonic plague
“step on crack and break yo’ mutha’s”
“take a toke and mother go broke,
while baby sucks a poisoned tit”
Deals done, lives taken…. old man found dead
…ah, gorked out on heroin the newspaper read

And the east side…ah yes, the east side
where the flophouse of neon purple
and boarded broken glass windows,
This is the hood of my brother
poet, activist and friend
…took brass Charles…
really took balls of brass to visit your crib …
like a cock in church he watched my back to my ride
As sirens scream and horn blast of traffic jam deafens
pissed driver will do shit for nobody
As brother one-eye, hits me up for cash and says
“hey brother, hey man… got any spare change?”
“I’ve done time in prison I’ve been”
Veiled threat I gathered but I give not yet
so I, “Tough”, the crazy faker said
“no! do y look like, a fuckin’ bank…brother?”
As I walked away not caring to watch my back
just sick of the shit going down on my way
to harm nobody street
Ooh, riverfront jazz festival with her enticing
smell of ribs and soul, corndogs and porta-johns
Electric eels to step over and around
pooling in water and piss…
danger lurks everywhere here you know
Where you can ten-dollar park all day
by Duc Dat Tang Kung Fu Academy
…. kick your ass for less
Uncle Sam high atop unicycle with balls
hanging out…oh doo dah day
As bare tittied women pass by
sporting painted nipples I want to suck
…see, no laws here
So I look…and I look again
Look there dear see the black queer
in tight leotard pant cock bulge like a codpiece,
…yeah, he’s hungry for lovin’ without commitment
Just wants meat stick flesh below the belt
…and so I look, but only once…
well, maybe twice….
Yeah, it’s true what ‘they’ say
Stenosis of narrow bone marrow streets
lined with delivery trucks, vomit and dog-shit…
Lebanese shop owner bitches out his hire
…probably family…in a tongue foreign to me
‘Fresh Fish’ it says on the side…. bloody thin water
dripping from the undercarriage onto broken brick
…here is the street of ethnicity
As the produce man with open boxes of lettuce
wheels a dolly through thick pigeon shit air
And melted bacteria on gum and spit cover ground grime
you, street side deli fare

where Modus operandi and Miranda mate…
ah, bitching blue uniformed dick with orange pad in hand
sticking it to some poor bastard trying to earn a dime

Swirling purple haze
inside Blues bar in low light cut
with 6 strings of raw electric energy
...door slightly ajar
Big city I drink in your shadows…
your alleys of stench and death
As a sax-man lays down a distant peacock’s cry
Lord and I sigh
I need a shot
A shot of big city blues

“Fuck man, I need a shot of amnesia”