Crazy Love

Previously Published in Haunted Waters Press


Crazy Love

Walking after midnight
with a man 
barely known,
it was a crazy love,

a Patsy Cline song 
played to life
in the well-worn
Gateway District.

Their chance encounter in 
the skid-row hotel hallway, 
and I became 
their records' scratch.

It was the late 50s,
and they did what was expected,
what was supposed to be right.
There was a single room

overlooking the train depot
and she tried to calm 
the baby through the rumble 
of the evening's Empire Builder.

But the Seagram's 7 sign flashed 
throughout the nights, and maybe
that pulsing whiskey light ruined her blood. 
It ran through a vein of thirst,

nearly under control
until it wasn't,
and then they just did 
whatever they could.