The Days Of Wine & Roses

The hard part's keeping his feet; the tilt
jars him & is he a pinball machine
or just some guy whose wingtips understand craving?
A Wurlitzer orbiting, the world felt tipsy then,
a porkpie hat tipped on its axis—
but what doesn't veer slantwise windblown down boulevards?
A hat lost from a romantic flick
whose owner must think piano Manhattan
Studebacker; & too he thinks bouquets
but it's actually stemware catching
Pall Mall's reflections.

All right, the barroom's not bigger than
the Orient Express, but it's going places,
it's a quarter spun into a slot to ring up jackpots, it's
Jimmy Cagney's tripping-to-catch-his-straw-hat-
song-&-dance, it's upside-down
Chinese flowers in fishponds; &
he needed to feel the lurch, & it wasn't
the gusts rustling big trousers,
it wasn't the wind knocking off his porkpie hat,
it was the way the world moved then,
& he liked anyhow to get swept off his feet,
he said, as who doesn't?

Meanwhile, Sally walked inside revolving doors;
she's both there & not there, like
Gene Tierney in Laura.
But she's on time of course, so much so it's scary,
she's a sweep second hand stared at.
She arrives, he says, like Billy Holiday's tide
washing up B flats, murder mysteries, Old Fashioneds,
& what's more, inevitable things:
fortune cookies, a pretzel's twist, pearls strung into
a nervous breakdown,

this & so much more she comes in with.
He'd rather lounge inside the mirror lighting her
beautiful Lucky Strikes, her smoky orchids.

This must have been what it was like those days,
like a plastic tuxedo lit up all night in
the dry cleaning shop next door,
electrified but yellow as lemon ice, & like
a champagne cork rocketing past escape velocity
from Times Square, New Year's 19-anything,
like pink carnations peddled in the train station like
Shanghai contraband, it was like that
to be young & in love, both wearing sports coats,
& these larger than thought, & with such deep pockets.
This must have been what it was like,

this world: more his oyster than any shooter he slurped
awash in lager through Happy Hour.
Sometimes he gets so choked up he's hearing torch songs
sung 10 feet deep in a swimming pool
(& ripples radiate green from a hat afloat but
the water's not waxed paper flower wrappers, it
flickers a Chablis quart's anemic green glass)
sung 10 feet deep in a swimming pool
at 2 a.m. as the party moves elsewhere &
a corsage sinks in the deep end,
tragic as a blonde.
It was a rosé bottle dropped, was them, was
hats snatched from the haberdashers, them, was
flowers carried off on a subway, was
them, he & Sally, wobbly, asking,
Why does someone always have to drown.

Jack Hayes © 1990-2009
This poem appeared previously in Chump