Ash Cheyne

Busker

One way or another I’m gonna get ya

to the city that never smiles

not even yellow cab drivers arguing

about who pays the Tribeca toll before

crashing at the Pennsylvania

just across from the Garden

I wonder if I can go the distance

before blowing my mind

as we walk and walk and walk

clutching cheap vodka disguised as lemonade

with blisters on feet all the way from Brooklyn

to where the towers have vanished

She gives me hope behind a dumpster

in the village of lost souls

in return for half a dozen beers and a trashy tee shirt

to go with that thousand yard stare and crocodile tears

I listen in faint disbelief

as I hear her say I’m not enough for her

and I smile at a dead body on the sidewalk

and think of home

which you don’t get anywhere else

"Busker" features in the poetry collection "Pretty Real," available in the Shop

Sunset 92

Going down to a familiar place

where it’s easy to see nothing

at all not even

some sense of reality

Remembering the first time

little virgins eating ice cream

in the middle of the night

Little Tokyo drinking tea in mugs

with no handles in the day

Being told about the importance

of good teeth

not the danger

of fermented fruit with vodka

and dancing with strangers

as Sinatra sings for 50 cents

from the juke box of a biker bar

Having nothing really stupid to say

about a fake drive by

or someone’s Grandma

getting kicked out of the bath

on account of some drunk British guys

springing a bladder surprise

Indiscretions in phone booths

or jay walking in bare feet

sitting next to Pfeiffer

then sniffing her seat

Looking back from the Griffith

and up at it all

observing from the brighter stars

that it’s all over now

Someone

Everyone is someone

way or another

it’s a question of whether or not

you’re bothered about the others

Or what someone else makes of it all

when they take a bad fall

and need someone else to blame

for what they never became

No one can get away from that

as we’re all famous for fifteen minutes

for good or bad

It’s all the same