The Days of Wine & Roses

By Jack Hayes

Poems written in San Francisco between 1990 & 1996, with one postscript poem from Idaho in 2003. The style has been called "Beat Formalist."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Apr 6, 2011
• ISBN: 9781257417797

Book preview

Seashells

The Days Of Wine & Roses

The hard part’s keeping his feet; the tilt

jars him & is he a pinball machine

or just some guy whose wingtips understand craving?

A Wurlitzer orbiting, the world felt tipsy then,

a porkpie hat tipped on its axis—

but what doesn’t veer slantwise windblown down boulevards?

A hat lost from a romantic flick

whose owner must think piano Manhattan

Studebacker; & too he thinks bouquets

but it’s actually stemware catching

Pall Mall’s reflections.

All right, the barroom’s not bigger than

the Orient Express, but it’s going places,

it’s a quarter spun into a slot to ring up jackpots, it’s

Jimmy Cagney’s tripping-to-catch-his-straw-hat-

song-&-dance, it’s upside-down

Chinese flowers in fishponds; &

he needed to feel the lurch, & it wasn’t

the gusts rustling big trousers,

it wasn’t the wind knocking off his porkpie hat,

it was the way the world moved then,

& he liked anyhow to get swept off his feet,

he said, as who doesn’t?

Meanwhile, Sally walked inside revolving doors;

she’s both there & not there, like

Gene Tierney in Laura.

But she’s on time of course, so much so it’s scary,

she’s a sweep second hand stared at.

She arrives, he says, like Billy Holiday’s tide

washing up B flats, murder mysteries, Old Fashioneds,

& what’s more, inevitable things:

fortune cookies, a pretzel’s twist, pearls strung into

a nervous breakdown,

this & so much more she comes in with.

He’d rather lounge inside the mirror lighting her

beautiful Lucky Strikes, her smoky orchids.

This must have been what it was like those days,

like a plastic tuxedo lit up all night in

the dry cleaning shop next door,

electrified but yellow as lemon ice, & like

a champagne cork rocketing past escape velocity

from Times Square, New Year’s 19-anything,

like pink carnations peddled in the train station like

Shanghai contraband, it was like that

to be young & in love, both wearing sports coats,

& these larger than thought, & with such deep pockets.

This must have been what it was like,

this world: more his oyster than any shooter he slurped

awash in lager through Happy Hour.

Sometimes he gets so choked up he’s hearing torch songs

sung 10 feet deep in a swimming pool

(& ripples radiate green from a hat afloat but

the water’s not waxed paper flower wrappers, it

flickers a Chablis quart’s anemic green glass)

sung 10 feet deep in a swimming pool

at 2 a.m. as the party moves elsewhere &

a corsage sinks in the deep end,

tragic as a blonde.

It was a rosé bottle dropped, was them, was

hats snatched from the haberdashers, them, was

flowers carried off on a subway, was

them, he & Sally, wobbly, asking,

Why does someone always have to drown.

Heaven #1

I want to write something that’ll forgive everything

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So what if it was raining—the vines on the

wooden fence had the shakes etc.

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Awnings were everywhere on the margin of existence:

storefronts, eyes suspended in space etc.

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Were they gray were they green?

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The aroma of homemade ravioli

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Here we are in a country the train tracks stitch together

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Yellow raincoats reeking cod liver oil & isolation which has no odor whatever

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The stars hidden back of the nimbus clouds & tangerine sun they were driving up to New York at 11:00 p.m. unlike us

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there are merely an infinite number of ways to say

goodbye like saying goodbye

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The cigarette-smoke gray curtains the actual smoke more blue than white

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Max sporting her cat’s-eye shades gone iridescent

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I want to write something that’ll forgive everything

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You could be happy for an hour or two, maybe sleep someplace—there’s a weeping willow & picnics that never quite get off the ground

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Here we are in a country the train tracks stitch together &

there are merely an infinite number of ways to say

Revenge Of The Baby Sax

He’s built without fingers with 1 big itch he can’t scratch he’s

got 2 dozen nostrils for spite tho, all caterwauling

traffic jams with congested lungs & smoldering noisemakers

squealing Figaro like a pig in revolt

there’s nothing but polka dot bow ties anyhow acting like

clouds afloat in a smoke-free office—it’s New Year’s Eve, baby

pink slip phone message slips snow pinko confetti

betwixt the gray gray raindrops most of them in re:

1 big itch that can’t be scratched

but the Baby Sax feels heartache like a pi-

mento skewered at the business end of a dry martini

He’s got no heart he wants the angry zen rendition of Auld Lang Syne

snort snort—puffing out