This girl I knew was too cool
Tight
curled, close cut flat-top
Cast
in auburn
Looking
like the poor-little-red-headed-
Step-child of Grace Jones
Product
of a Lost Weekend spent in the embrace
Of some wily Leprechaun
Saints
Preserve Us!
She had some fight in her
She
was the perfect match . . . for my friend
If I had just stayed a little longer that
summer
Ran
away from home, refused to move
That would be me, prostrate in an abandoned
pool
My
body at rest on hers, our faces joined at the mouth
We three spent the evening in ruins
Amid
the shambles and wreckage of this eerie hotel
A
transplant from Desolation Row
That
someone famous had slept in
And
then Checked Out for the last time.
I
left my heart there; we had always been close
The
lie I told myself was my friend
Was
just the closest thing, not the dearest
And
an open door was still in her heart
When the moonlight wore off I knew
I’d
never walk through that door
A punch on the arm
As she passed me in the hall
A
generous laugh
At
an unsuccessful joke
Were
the closest we came
To
an affectionate dance
Billy
Bragg sang to me
One
lonely sleepless night,
It
was that line from that song The Saturday
Boy
Where Billy sings
“In the end it took me a dictionary /
To find out the meaning of unrequited,”
Like
memories of a turtle summer
Chasing
Rat through a dead hotel
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