Irvin on New Year's Eve | New Year's Eve, Times Square, Music, 80s

Irvin on New Year's Eve

By Beverly Wilkinson,

Favoured : 157

Published in : , Poetry

Irvin, the middle-aged blues player,
always has a gig on New Year's Eve;
tonight, he jives on about how the 80s
made him a metal man
rubs a hand over his closely shorn skull
talks about big hair
tells me how 'The Eve'
only used to mean one thing--
Times Square

He and Blackie would hop a train
with a pocket full of ludes and coke
walk from Penn Station
their hair flapping at their shoulders
each step like birds preparing for flight

On a crowded side street
a guerilla–style raid by the NYPD
separates them
outside some flashy club;
Irvin trades his pocket for an invitation
rubs his leather-clad elbows with
designer names he doesn't know
all enamored with a hard-core
ballet dancer named Mikhal

He remembers no other names
takes a train home alone
will never see these people again in person
only understands its significance
now, as a middle-aged blues player
laughs through the clouds of pungent smoke
he blows up to the ceiling
shifts his legs in the sheets
offers the epilogue before I can ask
rumbles on about Blackie,
the rich guy, and the prostitute

Beverly Wilkinson lives in Hockessin, DE. Whenever she visits New York she always arrives underground. She once performed a poem to a PATH car full of curious onlookers going from Hoboken to Manhattan just so she would have something interesting to put in her bio. Beverly visits NYC whenever she is feeling bored with her suburban routine.

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