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Doug Draime

  The Last She Said Poem


   She said all my

   writing was full of rage,

   and morose,

   and that I just used

   being a writer,

   as an excuse for

   being a drunk and

   an asshole.


   I was blind drunk again and she

   was driving. We were headed

   down Fountain Avenue

   in Hollywood, in her mini-

   Volvo station wagon.


   I attempted, unsuccessfully,

   to push her from

   the car.


   Last I heard she moved back

   to New York City,

   and was working for a

   lesbian stage actress,

   who paid her in

   sex and cocaine.


   I'm still an asshole but I stopped

    drinking.


   

   Miles


   Leading me through 1963

   in Chicago, you  and

   your Sketches of Spain; always playing in my

   top floor apartment on

   State street north.

   There is no doubt Rodrigo's heart

   sang and sang, when he heard

   your version.

   I was just a snot-nosed

   kid, drunk on Black Label beer

   and Benzedrine inhalers,

   cruising the Puerto Rican bars

   on north Clark looking for

   16 year old girls,

   with stunning eyes like coal.

   Beautiful, red haired Patricia,

   she tried to straighten me out, attempted to

   adjust my tormented sights.

   But I had to live, or die in the bohemian life

   The old hi-fi I brought up from Indiana

   rumbled and flashed the melancholy joy of you,

  ` and my tears would flow

   as I listened to your horn

   create spheres and dimensions I  never knew

   human beings were allowed to touch;

   colors so bright and whirling,

   how could the whole earth not be as amazed as I?

   

   [Index]

Thunder Sandwich #26 - Summer/Fall 2005