Prague Poem by Harry Irene

I sat drinking an Irish coffee, hours to spare,
In a street car café on Wenceslas square.
Thought of the king and stoned Stephen
Bringing flesh and wine for a heathen.

In a museum I handled a gold ingot
Coins and cards, I could use a slip knot.
Fled with party rockers in tow,
The smell of bourbon beckoned me so.

Sweet Sazerac and statesmen,
I hear my time is of value time and again.
Dan the man was a teacher and an American
Dreaded 4th place so he settled for heroin.

I was abandoned in the rain.
We'd just drift, who was to blame?
Madness burning hot, drenched it with Czech beer
With Katalyna hosting, I'll say what I fear.

Slobbering and slipping on sweet, sultry words
My tongue enticed, made wind for the birds.
Her man-handler pulls up, says 'Maybe you should leave.'
I retort, 'I may spill swill, but you look like a dry heave.'

Katalyna's tyrant threw me out on the cobble,
Towards a neon draped sports bar I fancied my hobble.
Lynchburgs in a tiki glass, with Marlboros on the side.
Feigning tears and robbed of a pain that had died.

She counted her years out loud,
And sees the lines on her face as if a tree's rings would abound.
I tell her that all I see is her face
The edge of her smile tapers off into that moment's trace.

A man comes up, says his name must be Tomás
I said, 'I won't doubt you' and I took up his lance.
His blood was running hot and I saw what I'd scried,
And my open hand came down from high on his pride.

You smell like petrichor and wheat
And fumes of ozone when our eyes meet.
I see gardens, a piano, noir street lights
We walk away. I'll trace the shades of those nights.

A silicone silhouette stands abreast,
I say, 'Baby, I'm solid gold if you'll be my acid test.'
She lends me a drink, that circonia jewel,
and veils me to dissolve as a fool.

Stillwater. I fish her azure ocean.
Bedsheets fleet with harmonic motions.
These skins which drape me feel straight,
Taut and tied. Like sails heaved to and thus abate.

'15 years of law school, ' she says
Bird-like and crooked. I droop into my fizz.
'Morality is a luxury … corruption is rife'.
Her hatch a-howling, I'll close it with a knife.

I drift and dance, saunter and scud,
A maudlin song accruing the acidity of my blood.
I mount cobbled darkness, crown this my Nebo
Here be sainthood. Here be Beatrice, her beauty aglow!

I have an atom for a heart, blood vessels pump-action.
If I can't have you, I'll start a chain reaction.
I'll profess it all as an abstraction,
But 'I need her like I need satisfaction.'

I awoke in reconciliation, brains bellowed from my shrift.
The sun will break on my back. Azure photons that redshift.
Or maybe I swallowed it. I'm dry as a bone.
Rivulets seared and raw. Always, all alone.