I hope you enjoy this moment in time. “Colfax Mona Lisa” is an extra poem in the ebook version of LOVE IN AN ISIS TOWN collected poems. The ebook has ten extra poems more the upcoming paperback (mainly so I can breakeven from the print costs).
(Purchase the Amazon ebook)
COLFAX MONA LISA
Street of broken dreams
Dreams by the hour
Where the buffalo roamed
Upon a land of painted men and old names
Crackheads, whores, and hustlers
Cracked-teeth smiles and razor-blade handshakes
Where the crazy guy shakes his dog tags
As he meets your eye
And speaks of battles
In holy tongues you can't understand
Knocking them back
Veins trembling on thick forearms
Thighs pressed under table
Glasses raised in clammy hands
Toasts raised in throats
An oilfield roughneck from Greeley
The Sedalia horse boy
And an electron wrangler
Kind eyes and traveller's tales
Under the Clown Lady painting
The Colfax Mona Lisa
Acquaintances and a Paris affair, renewed
Far from Place Vendôme
With friends of Dorothy that look like lumberjacks
I exhale tainted nostalgia
Born here, at the death of something
Among past unclean souls
To be back on Denver's skid row
With an open heart
Is no lean victory
After five times around the world
Three years of palaces, slums
And golden avenues
To write words on blank pages
Poems called from the well of loneliness
With ginger whiskeys and cold ales
Plaid and cowboy leather
Nob Hill Inn
Where the faces change
But the characters remain the same
Where my pantomime received its final nail
Hammered into a coffin of West Texas Gothic
Blood spilled for the puppet masters
Of my horror
In moments they feigned to care
That first night on icy footpaths
Gone from the Clown Lady’s gaze
With company so corrupt
Hustlers could be compared to angels
I closed my eyes
But when all was lost a ribbon of prairie dawn
Gave promise above dead end streets
I saw the light of ten thousand sunrises
One for each nameless love
That had walked a mile-high above America
Kind fates that would hold me
And bear me, with my shattered heart
Away from the high plains
From Appalachia to Alameda
From a full glass I thought was empty
Due to unclean reflections
Poison poured from wounds
Like bullet holes in Tennessee mountain moonshine
Those toxic rivulets ran dry
And by craft of words
And lonely labour
Whiskey would be raised again
Where the clown lady smiles
My Colfax Mona Lisa
by D. J. Swales