Brighton Beach Nights
By Rp Verlaine

 

Again in her
car. Inhabitions
at low tide
we talk absurdities:
Flying saucers, fairies
Arabian nights/quitting
cigarettes/finishing
a rehab/ Ad hock to
Adlib/ absudity
of each kiss taking
longer to twist
to an ending. Weed's
pungent perfume
overwhelms almost
rank stirrings of
our disappearing fast
food. We're so
stoned in this
comedy that all
we know...
Is the salt taste of
our eager flesh
is just perfect
after Tequila.

 

The Seducers

 

Most nights, pickup lines flow with tainted grace
a calling, few have the requisite charm
oozing malevolence, mixed with a thirst
that separates candor from the dark place
Loneliness stalks and rents before self-harm
makes one a casualty or far worse.
She looked like another, I long pursued
though not as daring or pretty but close
enough to put a past ghost to its rest.
Above bar noise and clinking glasses lie clues
of where she's at or from, what tragic hopes
good makeup hides till eager lips confess.
hunger for contact in a large room
we'll lie our way out of by the next noon.

 

Rp Verlaine lives in New York City. He has an MFA in creative writing from City College. He taught in New York Public schools for many years. His first volume of poetry- Damaged by Dames & Drinking was published in 2017 and another – Femme Fatales Movie Starlets & Rockers in 2018. A set of three e-books titled Lies From The Autobiography vol 1-3 were published from 2018 to 2020. His latest book, Imagined Indecencies, was published in February of 2022. He was nominated for a pushcart prize in poetry in 2021 and 2022.