how the nights there
were like little orgasms.
“Did you feel that one? ” she’d ask,
the way girls do in Texas.
“Houston, Dallas, San Antone…
no match for being young in Austin
the best town to come together in,
the worst if you’re on your own.”
She wanted to take me there
eat light cosmopolitan bougie-lit food
fuck me long and late and hot
into a bed of cool music,
then the slow woogie waltz
in a morning of hedonist senses,
fresh-ground coffee
and the scents of imagined
permanences.
She went to LA, got married
to an indistinct figure
named Rick, or was it Joe,
wrote to say “Save me,
my best years are here
but so’s they dont just disappear,
hold on to Austin
where the young ones go”
I’ve reached Austin now.
On 6th Street I dine alone,
watch the kids all coming
to a 6th Street saxophone,
their charged laughter sweeping
like an instinctive mistral,
and fatherly law enforcers
on fast fun bicycles
policing urges that are natural……
…..but I’m twice their age, these easy ecocops,
I’m unfatherly, dirty-minded, free
and the only part of Austin left with me
is the loss of it.
Austin, Texas
was never meant to be.