Slant Street Transplants

Head start on a frozen night
we'll trickle slow down blighted
                                  street ways
and mix our crunching footsteps
with our ever-rougher laughs.

Grab a drink
too tired for sleeping.
Work weeks pile up, getting deep and
I don't think apartment walls
can contain us one more night.

So save a drink for me,
and meet me out on Longstaff Street

I've got all night and an axe to grind
You've got a case of cold friends
                                 and a troubled mind
so let's pace
                    this neighborhood.
Pull up my roots, we'll untangle yours
from Knowles Street, right on Marshall
                            walk and drink for hours
'til we sink
                  that slant street moon

Transplants grafted to this town
we'll spread roots in these downer
                                      regrets
and spill our gravel laughter
on the sidewalks with these beers.

South, back home,
a handful got it:
rotten nights pave paths to coffins
I don't know how many steps
it'll take to cool our heels.

So grab a drink for me
and we'll go walking Longstaff Street

We've got these drinks, we can disappear
into a slant street night
                      where no one'll hear
how fucked up
                       these days become.
I still think back on Emerson Park
that Summer night we fled from
                   the cops through the dark
when the Russell
                     Street traffic hums...