The rose red dresses flutter and float
Over beautiful girls with smooth legs cartwheeling
Dancin' like swinging jitterbug springs
Going round in a bebop rhythm
Through the saxophone blasting soul
And the jazz drums which clash and simmer

The yellow lights and red smoke floods
Singing and a' ringin' in circles
Filling the air with childish smiles and laughter
Freedom reigns on the crowded dance-floor
Synchronisation in the joyful movers
Who dance and drink into the night

I trudge through the blizzard with my boots sinking
To my knees in snow and the flakes
Cloud my frosted eyelids again

Wiping away the whiteness to allow my vision
A few feet in front as the onslaught of cold wet
Particles fall like horizontal rain

Moving fast as a hurricane
My knees are weakened to collapse
I am so lost I cannot think

Many friends lost on the way
Fallen and buried instantly
In pure white ecstasy

No time for ceremony
Hours ago I lost the main party
I lost the light of survival

In the blinding white
My frigid gloved hand above my eyes
Resolution in my mind

On the fringes of sight
In the dark myopic distance
I see the sea blue light
In the lonely darkness

the lady has me temporarily off the bottle
and now the pecker stands up
better.
however, things change overnight--
instead of listening to Shostakovich and
Mozart through a smeared haze of smoke
the nights change, new
complexities:
we drive to Baskin-Robbins,
31 flavors:
Rocky Road, Bubble Gum, Apricot Ice, Strawberry
Cheesecake, Chocolate Mint...

we park outside and look at icecream
people
a very healthy and satisfied people,
nary a potential suicide in sight
(they probably even vote)
and I tell her
"what if the boys saw me go in there? suppose they
find out I'm going in for a walnut peach sundae?"
"come on, chicken," she laughs and we go in
and stand with the icecream people.
none of them are cursing or threatening
the clerks.
there seem to be no hangovers or
grievances.
I am alarmed at the placid and calm wave
that flows about. I feel like a ***** in a
beauty contest. we finally get our sundaes and
sit in the car and eat them.

I must admit they are quite good. a curious new
world. (all my friends tell me I am looking
better. "you're looking good, man, we thought you
were going to die there for a while...")
--those 4,500 dark nights, the jails, the
hospitals...

and later that night
there is use for the pecker, use for
love, and it is glorious,
long and true,
and afterwards we speak of easy things;
our heads by the open window with the moonlight
looking through, we sleep in each other's
arms.

the icecream people make me feel good,
inside and out.

The latch lifts with a heavy clunk
And like a rusted playground memory
The metal door creaks open slowly
Releasing no light from the dark
And the cold and the infinite parallel worlds
Of nothing

Stitched together lightly, shifting
Silent and brushing past like pedestrians
Or barges on a deep dark canal
Never touching and nearly feeling
The warmth emanating from the cold black and white
Bodies