this place is like a ghosttown these days
walk down the barren streets, pale in the lamplight
hunch my collar against the wind
 
there’s a scrawny mutt cowering in the alley
been kicked too many times
and if I said my own name
his eyebrow would rise & he’d bark once for ‘what?’
 
even uptown where the traffic snarls & spits
my luck’s as ragged as crushed Camel butts
can’t beg a handout or bum a smoke
can’t even get laid
 
insomnia’s my only blessing
can’t dream if you don’t sleep
the heart is still a hunter
in the dim alcoves of a ramshackle tenement
where love’s an illegal drug
 
those far-aways & long-agos
still kick me in the back pocket of regret
the country girl who needed a man
to reach the candy jar on the high shelf
or the gypsy-eyed rodeo widow
who slipped out of my lariat
 
it’ll be another rainy night
and I can’t find a disputatious newspaper to cover my head
so I jam my hands in my pockets
and go home
 
cold-hearted as I am, I still pity them
who need the wax blowtorched outa their ears
 
nobody hears the poetry anymore…