The cracked and cobbled sidewalks
Seams grouted with the tears of lust
The Lower East Side alleyways
Radiate a body-part stench and smoke from
The burn of bruising relationships
You can hear the echo of emotions
As the footsteps in unison draw near
All the freaks soiled with the germ of love
Haunt bars at night like cavalier sex addicts
Looking through stained glass
Searching for that special one
Formed out of the gutter’s blood
Down on avenue A
Where inside the park
The whispering hoodlums triangulate
Aftershocks before the gentrification project
Old stand-byes open their condemned cage doors
Punk watering holes in cross section with oiled prison grates
7A and 9B —bars named by cross streets
A palette of gender colors and drug choices
Men find authentic selves in women
Everyone blends into distraught beauty
Outrage circles back in time corralling bad memories
All gunmetal and diesel stained
Men’s faces as real as tire tracks
Women line up on bar stools
Birds strumming a telephone wire
Asphalt cheeked and bedeviled
There is no fluff or pomp
Accolades rain down like grenades
Sex objects with no power of choice
Music starts like road-kill splatter
Wet Doc Martins trample the dance floor
The punk scratching distorted bass line pummels eardrums like a speed bag
The body gallops to the thudding percussion
Torn shirts with hidden tattoos
Collide with platinum women in stilettos
Maidens pulsate and the floor vibrates
Oblong night glasses reflect the moon’s silver tongue
While dilated obsidian pupils carve out more night
The catatonic lean on the soft waves of early music
As the frenetic scream back at the bar
There are no take-home lessons
It all happens here
The awestruck certitude of animal lust
Rules the shy ones cowering in plastic positions
Until they are assaulted and dragged into the dark
The formula is mixed and the barbaric matchmaker laughs
The singer growls out the lyrics
A fever pitch resides at ankle level
Music now mounts the voluptuous crowd’s hind quarters
Steam is kicked up from sweat on the dance floor
He licks the sweat from her brow
She pulls his pelvis onto hers
…and the lyrics go:
— “Bodega girl had a bad case
—of the clap between her legs
—she cried right by her window
—hoping her man would come back”
–“rampant rabid syphilis
–rampant rabid syphilis
–rampant rabid syphilis”
–“oh how she burned up inside
–with 18 year old jealousy
–her man was in another’s arms
–her snatch way too forgone”
–“rampant rabid syphilis
–rampant rabid syphilis
–rampant rabid syphilis”
The drummer bangs the cymbals with a forceful shiver
The awkward singer bleeds from his lips
Dancers claw onto the stage
Brute bouncers step on hands and keep the crowd submerged
The shapeliest in garters smart as foxes elope to the basement
Where the darkness forges electric steel bondage
The maestros of necrophilia settle for a pulse and warm breasts
Electric sparks leave the stage in metallic spurts
A down-hop bell-bottomed bourbon whore
Bangs the godsmack into barbed-wire slow motion
Dancing off the drug’s elements in erect smoke rings
As corsets with gunpowder fill-up the push-up bras
The band penetrates into basement speakers
Lighting the way and the lyrics go….
—“Ooohhh Bodega girl
—you were everything to me
—The sweetest grape on the vine
—Until love poisoned your rose”
—“And Oh Oh On Bodega girl
—How I loved you
—before you were polluted
—now I can’t bear it
—-anymore, anymore, anymore…”
–“rampant rabid syphilis
–rampant rabid syphilis
–rampant rabid syphilis”
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