Tuesdays' nights

was the whiskey and the jazz playing On too many black nights with too Many lonely women and not a poem Between them How many times can you run From the shadow of the voices that Surround you Beating like drums in the darkness Tasting more of your flesh each time Not leaving enough for a man to breathe No way for a man to live How could the hep-cat jive survive When my voice can only spit silence Wasn't a dream left to filter thru The night worn inside and out and Bled dry a bottle singing the page blank and life in the hands of the haves laughing at the broken shadows of the have-nots There was a club on 34th and Second Ave where the jazzman swung All night long beat poets recited Tuesdays' nights and Jack was always drunk in the third booth Scrawling poems on paper bags and notebooks Taking life hard on the chin and after a while not fighting back anymore Ain't the road thzt donev Jack in