the one who loved her last

The one who loved her last

his lizard skin boots itch with a stink

in a tattoo parlour on lone street

gripping a half empty glass of bourbon

drinking tears from a crooked eye

crying for the nights

when she howled smiling in a fountains shower.

And the cello strums a lonely beat

while the girls on uptown street

dance a naked twist for the whores on the beat

three lines rhyme for no reason it aint no crime

for his gut to reject the sweetened wine

of the beauty of a grimy gutter in an empty street

as she sings his pitiful tune for the one who ran away

Down the line where the black man whines

A lament  on a whiskey bottle drum

she rides her final trip on a dragon who sings no song.

The breeze it fades to up-street jazz missing an uptown funk

while the trumpet plays its last and the bourbon

swirls to the bottom of the one who loved her last

© Francie Joesph McGivney (one drunken night)