New York

## Autobiography
# Jack Dempsey’s NY 1980

Oh god. Oh Dear.
A hangover in New York New York.
Small recollections through
hazes of alcohol pulsed pain.
Shaking fingers fumbling
for coffee and cigarette.
In a dark wood cased cabin
from sweat stinking bunk.
A million other people
who jerked through the same dance.
Night before around the world.
I stepped in time with you.

On subways that fled past
as horizontal kaleidoscopes
filled with germs and smoke,
And the lost waiting mindlessly
For a gap to mind.
With silent frightened dwellers
seen in a thousand unseen glimpses.
Speeding past every mugger
and murderer in New York.
On the way to towers of shit
and drugs and petty insanity.
I’d smartened up for the task
Black suit, white shirt
Black tie silver tie clasp.
I looked like a
Reservoir dog.

“Noo Yoik and beef boigers”.
Broadway was
Waiting for me.
My goal that night.
Jack Dempsey’s bar full
of punch drunk memories.
“Get the Limey a drink”.
Broken old pugs living
to fight again in Jacks bar.
Walls washed in raging bulls,
floating butterflies and marvellous sugar.
“Hey man you wanna wild toiky”.
Unwanted but necessary,
Bourbon drinking competition.
Two US marines vomited their youth away.
They underestimated their challenge.
“You’d better clean that up motherfucker”.

Barmaid has peroxide hair
A tattooed tear
And a way with words.
The competition never trained.
As I had, from sixteen.
Never growing up.
We had hard drinking trainers.
On Hessel Rd in “Rayners”.