i’m broke
in the desert
hiding under rocks
and all i see
is hollywood
a nasty mirage
not west with
its pretense
and soft leather
strut but
sammy’s liquor
in the sewer
and the girl
next door is
buying cigarettes
and i gotta make
excuses why i’m
drinking again
and we figure
something went
wrong like i
forgot to
grow up
or something
and the headlights
are flashlights
for road maps
out of here
no one really
wants to stay
where you can't
breathe
but you
see helicopters
and crack cocaine
and hear gunshots
and walk to
sammy’s
and buy
a quart of
crazy horse
and stumble home
and listen
to jazz
on the stereo
juarez
back alleys
rule like rat mazes
the girls frustrated
at the darkened corridors
or maybe it’s their
ill-fitting hats?
they fling off
and swear
and roam
room to room
no one paying at
club el gallito
club pedragal
club flor del valle
club las pizcas
not a man
not a man
they say
worth a shit
on this entire
stretch
did you slip
on parquet
dance floors
and curse the pain
of a thousand nights
the music is everything
in locked away hollows
of shut venetian blinds
and a yardbird suite
of tomorrow
it’s all uphill
on a downhill slide
of prescriptions filled
in over the border
pharmacies
the pain doesn’t stop
but numbness
is the ticket
to black velvet survival
to suck on
loneliness
in shut out reality
is the place
for winners
when outside
is born to lose
Lawrence Welsh's fourth book of poetry, Believing in Bonfires, was published by Pitchfork Press in Austin, Texas, in 2003. Lawrence Welsh's work has appeared or is forthcoming in more than 150 journals, magazines and anthologies, including The Louisiana Review, Hawaii Review, The Wormwood Review, Nexus, Chiron Review, Poetry Motel, Poetry Now, Pearl, Bogg, Flipside, Whole Notes and the book Das Ist Alles--Charles Bukowski Recollected. Welsh directs the Poetry Jam Project at El Paso Community College, where he teaches writing and literature. The poems published are from the book Rusted Steel and Bordertown Starts, 1999, Sundance Press.