I can’t recall Vaseline Alley
In fact I’ve never known it, 
But the sensation sure, 
Kate waltzing through her Sensual World,
Her Machavellian kneels, afterward 
Gargling over at Gold Coast Listerine, fresh-minted moscow mules still tasting of warm water and salt but with ice. 
Smoke breaks with e-pens, the new cruise, 
Pay no regard the new what’s your number, bumped shoulders the ASL,
Ever been to Basix, the new Have we done this before. 
Pining eyes leaned against the dumpster,
Or so I was told,
Beyond the backroom at the Circus
the jostled down service entrance with broken frames, the broken promise one would 
hope to break with a score,
in a time before it became nothing but for pissing in secret and the piece 
of the night’s 270 feet away, so says on the phone, 
but the line at the Abbey’s gone on way too long to hone in on one’s instant connection. 
The scraping of boots and Levi’s against asphalt gone – 
Along the way said goodbye to the initial heave and thrust against brick walls and 
signs that read No Loitering, 
Surrendered for deafening noise
and crinkling bottles of water,
No need hearing what one’s saying, 
so long as glazed eyes read and gauge the lips,
A pondering wallow for the alleys of men whose men took the knee 
before the G, and in knowing dismissal of the 
fluid death decades later would soon resign without a halt
fortified through kneading and needing,
the nurseries turned nightclubs where most now so secure would
forgo the bated pining for tough and being 
for the grasp of the excessive, the night forgotten until 
recounting the evening with 1 PM morning’s chilaquiles.